Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Nissan in “Crisis Mode,” Banking on Electric Cars TNR.v, CZX.v, RM.v, LMR.v, WLC.v, CLQ.v, FMC, SQM, ROC, HEV, VLNC, NSANY, RNO, F, FCX, LUN.to, BHP,


"Lithium is the leveraged play on Peak Oil and rising Oil price with coming Inflation. Sector is very small and market is even more smaller - everything is ready for the parabolic move in case of supporting fundamentals.
Recent Oil Spill shows the real price for Oil and leaves no doubt for us that there will be no more cheap oil: offshore drilling is costly now, it will be even more costly later. Relatively cheap Oil is in the hands of state owned companies in not so friendly to U.S. places. Oil squeeze will come from diminishing production rates and rising Inflation. The move will be even more explosive than in the Gold market - in the end only minority of people is effected by the gold price even now, Oil is the underlining of all Western Energy Diet. It is not sustainable. Emerging markets are taking more and more share of world wide production, oil producing countries are spending more at home. If you account all cost to produce, deliver and protect Oil supply to U.S. corp the price is already above 150 USD/barrel.
"
Peak Oil and Lithium: Joint Operating Environment 2010
Please pay attention,
this report is written by those who knows the Real Price of Oil. If you account all military needed to protect Oil supply lines and cost of wars to get more oil, price will be well above 150 USD/barrel already. Now we all have another problem: there is simply no more oil enough for all. Will future wars for oil be the only answer?"





earth2tech:






Electric cars and low-cost vehicles in emerging markets: That’s the name of the game for Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. in the next fiscal year. Reporting a net profit of 42.4 billion yen (about $458.7 million) for the year ending March 31 and a quarterly loss of 11.6 billion yen ($125.5 million), Nissan executives emphasized signs of recovery and strategic commitment to greener vehicles Wednesday in remarks to shareholders. In the previous year, ending March 2009, Nissan reported a 233.7 billion yen ($2.5 billion) net loss.
“Although we continue to operate in an environment that is volatile and uncertain,” Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn said in a presentation today in Yokohama, Japan, “fiscal year 2010 will be an important year in which we launch an affordable, mass-market, all-electric, zero-emission vehicle, extend our presence in emerging markets and develop additional synergies in the Renault-Nissan alliance.” (Ghosn also heads up Renault.)
Nissan plans to launch its first electric model, the LEAF sedan, in select U.S. markets in December, with national sales slated for next year. At $32,780 (before incentives), the car could be one of the cheapest highway-capable electric vehicles on the road in coming years. The pricing — which Mark Perry, director of product planning and strategy for Nissan North America, has told us will allow the automaker to turn a profit on the vehicle — places the LEAF slightly under retail prices expected for BYD’s e6, Coda Automotive’s Coda sedan, Tesla’s Model S and General Motors’ Chevy Volt (see: 12 Plug-in Cars You Can Drive by 2011 and Electric Sedan Smackdown).
Nissan expects capital spending to reach 360 billion yen (about $4 billion) or 4.4 percent of sales in the fiscal year ending next March, up from 273.6 billion yen or 3.6 percent of sales in the 2009 fiscal year. According to Bloomberg, Ghosn said the increase in that percentage will stem from the automaker’s buildout of manufacturing capacity for electric cars and efforts to expand in emerging markets.
Ghosn also commented that the Renault-Nissan Alliance’s new partner, German automaker Daimler, will contribute to the company’s “complete recovery and enable future growth.” That will mean, “growing and being sustainable in a new era that requires meeting the growing demand for affordable mobility while being conscious of and responsive to environmental requirements,” he explained.
Executives from Daimler and Renault-Nissan announced in April a comprehensive partnership to share powertrains and architecture for compact cars and light commercial vehicles. Among other projects, the companies plan to cooperate on electric versions of Daimler’s Smart Fortwo and Renault’s Twingo, and explore “opportunities to co-develop technologies related to electric vehicles and batteries.” In Japan today, however, Ghosn said it’s too early to disclose how the deal will unfold in terms of sharing technology for electric vehicles, according to the AP.
In a time when many automakers are racing to increase the range and decrease the cost of plug-in vehicles in upcoming generations, Nissan also plans to raise its investment in research and development to 430 billion yen (about $4.6 billion) in the 2010 fiscal year, compared to 385.5 billion yen ($4.2 billion) in last fiscal year.

The automaker will have some help when it comes to ramping up EV production. Nissan closed a $1.4 billion loan with the Department of Energy earlier this year, with the funds set to go toward retooling of a Smyrna, Tenn. plant for Nissan’s electric LEAF sedan, as well as batteries for the vehicle.
Nissan’s plan calls for production of the LEAF to begin in Oppama, Japan, and for the Smyrna plant to come online in 2012. In addition, the LEAF model and batteries are slated to start rolling off assembly lines at a plant in Sunderland, UK in 2013, with aid from the UK government.
The automaker sold 3.5 million vehicles in the year just ended, including a strong push from China, while North America and EU sales declined. For the 2010 fiscal year ending next March, Nissan is forecasting 3.8 million vehicle sales. Electric cars will represent just a drop in the bucket for the time being, with the automaker targeting sales of 6,000 units for the LEAF in Japan and aiming to bring in 20,000 reservations for the model in the U.S. before it launches in select regional markets at the end of this year.
Images courtesy of Nissan"

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