Once a day, someone tells me I have a great job, and asks me how to get it. It's understandable. Parked in the underground below my apartment with an ocean view is a new Audi RS7 for testing – and if you can't love this car, you can't love any car.
The opportunity to drive great vehicles on race tracks (occasionally), the world's best roads (often) and in remote places such as the South American Andes (rarely) is tremendous. But the best part of this job is the time spent with the people behind the products.
The world's biggest industry is filled with ambitious, competitive personalities, with big brains and bigger egos. The best share a world view that appreciates cultural, social, political and economic differences. If you run a global car company selling cars in 160 markets, the road to success is paved with an appreciation for diversity and a disdain for bigotry.
"I am a businessman. I recognize facts and try to be pragmatic," Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn told me recently in an interview.
Ghosn – always referred to as Mr. Ghosn by Nissan and Renault types – is as comfortable discussing the implications for the Russian car market of a collapsing ruble, crashing oil prices and the fallout from the Ukrainian situation as he is forecasting the future of electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells.
He easily articulates the important distinction between autonomous and self-driving cars; emphasizes the need for a strong dealer network in Canada and worldwide; champions the consumer cost/benefits of common safety, fuel and emissions standards among developed countries (though he emphasizes "that is for governments to decide"); and predicts the auto industry will continue to consolidate through mergers, acquisitions, alliances and co-operative agreements.
His energy and enthusiasm are breathtaking. Consider: He's been head of Nissan for 16 years, leading it from the brink of bankruptcy to years of steady growth and profit. For more than a decade he's also been head of Renault, Nissan's alliance partner.
He spends his life everywhere or on an airplane, commuting between Tokyo and Paris, with stops here, there and in between. He is a citizen of business and a man of the world who is fluent in at least five languages. I've known him for two decades, from his pre-Nissan days as head of Michelin's operations in North America, and he's a straight shooter who does not suffer fools easily.
Russia, he says, will again be a major car market, despite the current mess. Brazil, where Ghosn was born and raised and whose currency, the real, has tanked, will take longer to recover. He sees electric car startup Tesla as an ally in promoting zero-emission cars, but emphasizes the need for taxpayer support of electric vehicles in the early stages. Hydrogen fuel cells are a promising technology, but they face massive barriers in terms of a lack of a refuelling infrastructure and potential government safety regulations.
Autonomous cars, with systems and functions that take over mundane driving on highways and in stop-and-go traffic, will come from Nissan in three waves: 2016, 2018 and 2020. By the end of the decade, you will be able to drive with your hands off the wheel in the city and on the highway. Totally driverless cars are farther off; regulators need time to sort out how to handle cars with no driver.
Perhaps most interesting, are his thoughts about alliances in the auto industry. Nissan-Renault works because each side respects the other and recognizes that "we are really all looking for the same thing: how to cut our costs and how to make our investments efficient."
It helps tremendously, he adds, that at Nissan, half of the top 100 executives are Japanese, the other half non-Japanese. "And the 50 per cent of non-Japanese are of 14 different citizenships. Which means you have a kind of very broad vision of cultures and collaboration. We have input coming from people coming from different countries and cultures. And this is very important." Nissan, the United Nations of car companies.
I love the cars, but the insights of the Ghosns of the world – the leaders behind them – are fascinating and always illuminating.
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