Carlos Tavares, Nissan's executive vice-president for product planning and design, claims that the Nissan electric vehicle will have "pricing similar to a conventional car", but this pricing will not include the cost of the battery. Despite the seemingly strange system, Tavares emphasized that there would be "no additional inconvenience" for purchasers, as they would simply "buy the car, sign the battery lease" and then drive away.
The exact details of how the lease would operate and the costs involved are still uncertain, but Tavares reassured reporters that in the end the consumer would come out on top compared to if they had purchased a standard petrol car.
While discussion of Nissan's upcoming electric vehicle was the main focus of Tavares talk, he also mentioned that the age of the electric car was now upon us, and that "our grandchildren may never believe we owned cars, not to mention that they had tailpipes."
He also predicted that future generations may give up car ownership altogether, instead opting to access a garage of shared vehicles for an annual or monthly fee, similar to the way that many supercar clubs work today. The benefits of this, he said, would mean that consumers could have access to a number of different vehicles, depending on what they required for any particular situation, such as an SUV for country driving or a van for carrying cargo.
