Electric cars will fall short of helping the environment without cleaner energy to charge the vehicles' batteries, said Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of Nissan Motor Co. and Renault SA.
"At least the car industry is bringing a breakthrough, which consists in saying that you are going to be transporting yourself from one place to another with zero emissions," Ghosn said Thursday at an energy conference in Paris. "Now the point is cleaning energy."
The French-Japanese alliance, which manufactures the best-selling Nissan Leaf electric car, is working to eventually bring out a battery-powered vehicle in China that will be priced at $8,000 or less, before incentives. Volkswagen AG, seeking to recover from its emissions-cheating scandal, is also planning to roll out affordable electric cars in the coming years to push the technology into the mainstream. The success of these efforts largely depends on government incentives to help overcome tepid customer reception, according to Ghosn.