RNMA the only car maker to profit from EVs: Ghosn

“We’re probably the only carmaker who’s starting to make money selling electric cars,” Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance chief executive officer Carlos Ghosn says.

Ghosn says it takes time to make money out of electric cars, but the Franco-Japanese auto partnership has mastered the business, CNBC reports.

The alliance is probably the most advanced and profitable carmaker when it comes to producing electric cars, he says.

It started work on electrification in 2008, and announced last year it will produce 12 new electric cars within the next five years.

“We know that there’s a steep curve before you start to make money out of electric cars. I think we are well advanced,” Ghosn says.

The carmaker has reported a record operating profit of 3.854 billion euros (NZ$6.4 billion) for 2017 — an increase of 17.4% from the year before.

Ghosn doesn’t foresee any impact on electric car costs if there’s higher raw material costs.

“The increase in the cost of the raw material would be compensated by much better know-how into how to make batteries more efficiently and how to substitute some of the raw materials going into the batteries.”