Electric Vehicles Help Europe’s Many Factories

Electric vehicles will not only reduce emissions, but may also help to solve another big problem for Europe’s car industry: too many factories  . At least that was the assertion of Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault and Nissan, in a discussion with journalists at the Geneva auto show on Wednesday.

Mr. Ghosn said that Renault and Nissan would be? ahead of the rest of the industry in mass-producing battery-powered vehicles next year and that the new vehicles could help keep the company’s European factories busy. Nissan is planning to produce the battery-powered Leaf at its factory in Smyrna, Tenn.

“In 2011, I’m going to be the only one on the market,” Mr. Ghosn said, dismissing other companies’ electric vehicles as mostly for show. “The numbers are big. I think there’s going to be a need for new capacity”Renault has more factories than it needs  . But Mr. Ghosn said it would be easier to produce components like electric motors and batteries in Europe competitively than it would be to produce conventional vehicles.

He said the French government had already ordered 100,000 battery-powered cars, and the start-up Better Place had ordered another 100,000 over several years. Better Place plans to allow users to swap in freshly charged batteries at a network of stations in Israel and Denmark.Battery last raised a fund in 2007, a $750 million effort , . With the new fund under its wing, Battery has raised nearly $4 billion since its inception.

Mr. Ghosn conceded that true demand for electric vehicles won’t be known until they are on the market. But he said surveys showed that more than 8 percent of car owners in the United States, Europe and Japan said they want their next vehicles to be electric.At various points in its history , Battery’s portfolio has included a litany of companies that have since been acquired or gone public.