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Nissan's Ghosn highest paid exec in Japan again, at $10M per year

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn is on track to be the highest-paid executive in Japan for the fourth time in five years. Ghosn's salary and bonuses last year rang the register to the tune of $9.8 million (995 million yen), and when stock dividends are added to the equation, the exec's total pay crested a billion yen. That represents a 0.7-percent increase over his pay from the previous year. Ghosn earned an additional $3.1 million as CEO of Renault.
According to Bloomberg, Ghosn's compensation was announced at a shareholder's meeting in Japan, prompting an explanation from the CEO. "I understand the sensitivity of the issue," Ghosn said. "Being in Japan should not be a handicap to attract talent. We need the best minds, we need the best talents."
Few would argue with that assessment, we'd guess, but it doesn't answer the question of whether Ghosn is the most talented CEO in Japan. Akio Toyoda, head of Toyota in Japan, earned 230 yen (though, as a large shareholder in Toyota, Toyoda's dividend payments bring him closer to Ghosn) in compensation while steering his automaker to a profit that was five times higher than Nissan's. Honda President Takanobu Ito was paid the comparatively small sum of 150 million yen last year.

Ghosn: Nissan Leaf can sell 50,000 units in US a year

For the Nissan Leaf, last year was good. So far this year, not so much. In the future, possibly much better, with a little help from the public sector, Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn says. Speaking at the New York Auto Show earlier this month, Ghosn was bullish on potential US sales of the country's best-selling electric vehicle, saying they had the capacity to reach 50,000 units a year, according to Automotive News. The key, Ghosn said, is that federal and local governments will have to do a better job ensuring there is a sufficient network of plug-in vehicle charging stations. That would make the Leaf's 84-mile single-charge range far less of an issue than it appears to be now. It would also give Ghosn a better chance of a decent return on the $5 billion Nissan and sister company Renault have invested in electric-vehicle technology. Last year, Nissan boosted Leaf sales in the US by 34 percent to 30,200 units, and earlier this year surpassed the 75,000-unit threshold for Leaf sales since its late-2010 US debut. So far this year, though, things are slipping, as sales through the first quarter were down 21 percent compared to 2014 to 4,085 vehicles. That's an awful long way from 50,000, but Ghosh didn't say which year he expects Nissan to sell those 50,000 Leafs. Related Videos:

California has sold 102,440 EVs since Volt, Leaf went on sale in 2010

Last July, Plug In America declared that a Mitsubishi i-MiEV in Alabama was the 100,000th electric vehicle sold in the US. Today, the California Plug-In Electric Vehicle Collaborative announced that that many EVs have now been sold in California alone. To celebrate the milestone – which was actually 102,440 EVs sold in the Golden State between when the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf were introduced in late 2010 and the end of August 2014 – we spoke with some of the key players in moving the battery-powered metal off of the dealer lots and into driver's driveways. CARB's Mary Nichols drives a Honda Fit EV, and said that in LA, it's no longer "a weird thing." The chairman of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), Mary Nichols, took a broad overview. Nichols herself drives a Honda Fit EV, and said that in her home of Los Angeles, that's no longer "a weird thing." She told AutoblogGreen that, "The industry people that we work with are very clear about this, they think the electric cars sell themselves, in terms of their driveability and attractiveness, if you can get a person into one," she said. "The best way to get a person into one is for them to see it somewhere, and that's really what we're celebrating here. As you get to critical mass, and I think 100,000 vehicles is getting to that point, people start looking at these as an option as opposed to something that they walked into the dealership already wanting to get." Given CARB's support of hydrogen vehicles as well as EVs, we had to ask Nichols when she thought H2 would hit the 100,000-vehicle milestone. She declined to answer that question, but did say that, "Hydrogen vehicles are just beginning to be available in the market. They are just being very selectively and even more cautiously introduced than plug-in vehicles because of concerns that customers will have a good experience, and a good experience means that there has to be an adequate supply of fueling stations," she said. "There has been a lot of expression of interest and support and vision in this direction but we are just at the beginning stages, where we were with plug-in vehicles a few years ago. It's going to take a while." If you ask Nissan's Brendan Jones how a state can support a new technology like plug-in vehicles, he will point to how EVs were rolled out in California. Turns out, the company has learned a lot from selling so many Leafs there.