Nissan Motor Co Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn said gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles are "not a good business story yet" because they still cost too much to produce.
Nissan, Japan's second-largest automaker, will begin selling a gasoline-electric version of its Altima next year in the US.
Toyota Motor Corp, Honda Motor Co and Ford Motor Co already sell hybrid vehicles, powered by both a gasoline engine and an electric motor.
Nissan is selling the Altima hybrid because of pressure from regulators in California, the largest US car market, to cut pollution, said Ghosn.
"The profitability on the Altima hybrid will be much lower from the normal Altima," he said at a press conference today at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in New Orleans. "We're still working on the cost."
Toyota was the first automaker to market hybrids with the Prius car in 1997. The company sold 53,991 Prius cars in the US last year and expects to sell 100,000 this year. Ford became the first US automaker with the hybrid version of its Escape sport-utility vehicle last year and this month announced plans to make hybrid versions of other models between this year and 2008.
Toyota has said the Prius has been profitable since late 2001. Toyota, unlike Ford, excludes research-and-development expenses when calculating hybrid-vehicle profitability, saying the cost is for a range of vehicles, not a single model.
Gasoline-electric hybrids run on their electric motors at low speeds, helping to improve fuel mileage.
Nissan is licensing some Toyota technology for the Altima hybrid while it develops its own hybrid system. Nissan "will be cautious certainly" about selling additional hybrid vehicles, Ghosn said.
Ghosn, 50, also said Nissan expects to sell 1 million cars and trucks in the US this year. Nissan's US sales rose 24 percent last year to 985,989 cars and light trucks and its share of the US market increased 1 percentage point to 5.8 percent.
If US sales reach about 1.25 million annually "we'd have to seriously look at an expansion," Ghosn said.
Taiwanese Olympic badminton men’s doubles gold medalist Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) and his new partner, Chiu Hsiang-chieh (邱相榤), clinched the men’s doubles title at the Yonex Taipei Open yesterday, becoming the second Taiwanese team to win a title in the tournament. Ranked 19th in the world, the Taiwanese duo defeated Kang Min-hyuk and Ki Dong-ju of South Korea 21-18, 21-15 in a pulsating 43-minute final to clinch their first doubles title after teaming up last year. Wang, the men’s doubles gold medalist at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, partnered with Chiu in August last year after the retirement of his teammate Lee Yang
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
RSS