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Nissan Leaf sales get January jump as Chevy Volt trends downward

The cold January sales dip hit both the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt last month, but when compared 2014 to 2013's first-month-of-the-year sales totals, one of the two early plug-in vehicles obviously came out on top. The top Leaf market also shifted away from Atlanta for the first time in months. Last year, the Leaf sold just 650 units in January, but it managed to move 1,252 last month, a 92.6-percent increase over 2013 but a big drop from the 2,529 sold in December 2013. Paige Presley over at Nissan told AutoblogGreen that the Leaf has now broken sales records for 11 months straight and that, "we see unique seasonality with some December pull-ahead demand based on federal and state tax incentives." The number one Leaf market also shifted away from Atlanta for the first time in months, moving back to San Francisco. That change could be short-lived. "We had some inventory constraint issues early in the month in Atlanta with end-of-year demand depleting stock," Presley said. "By the time we resolved that, the weather hampered sales." There was not as much good news on the Chevrolet front. Last month, the Volt sold 918 units, down from 1,140 in January 2013 and 2,392 in December 2013. It also marks the first time the Volt has sold in the three-digit range since January 2012, when it sold 603 copies. That string of solid months means that the plug-in hybrid has a roughly 12,000-unit lead over the EV since the two cars brought plug-in vehicles back to the mass market all the way back in December 2010. We will have our full report of January's green car sales up soon.

Ghosn's legacy: one of the auto industry's most effective execs

"Bob Lutz ... estimated that carrying out the Nissan operation would be the equivalent, for Renault, of putting $5 billion in a container ship and sinking it in the middle of the ocean." So wrote Carlos Ghosn in "SHIFT: Inside Nissan's Historic Revival," which was published in the U.S. in late 2004. Two points about that observation: It is in keeping with Lutz's "Often wrong but never in doubt." It shows that Ghosn is a remarkable executive, given that he was able to take Nissan from the edge of financial oblivion to one of the foremost automotive companies (although with alliance partners Renault and, more recently, Mitsubishi). In 1999, Ghosn created what was named the "Nissan Revival Plan." It could have just as well been called the "Nissan Resuscitation Plan." Things were that bad. Now Ghosn is in the midst of legal trouble, accused of financial improprieties of some sort. There is no indication that this is at anything near the scale of what happened at Volkswagen Group. There's malfeasance. And then there's malfeasance. It is likely that this is going to be the end of Ghosn's career, but at age 64, and as a man who has spent nearly the past quarter-century essentially on airplanes, it is probably a good time to leave the stage. What his next act will be — to court or even prison — is an open question. But arguably, Ghosn's performance in the transformation of Nissan and Renault, which also needed some strong medicine to keep it from collapse in the early '00s (although one suspects that the French government would have done its damnedest to keep it propped up), makes him one of the all-time most-notable executives in the auto industry. Ghosn closed plants in both France and Japan and he worked to dismantle the Nissan keiretsu network of interlocked companies, things that were absolutely unthinkable. He established plans with stretch goals in their titles, like the "20 Billion Franc Cost-Reduction Plan," and worked with his people to achieve them, despite the pushback that seemed to come along with the announcement of the plan. As in, as he recalled in SHIFT, "Some people said, 'He's off the deep end. He's raving mad. Doesn't he know that at Renault you set the most conservative goals possible so you can be certain to reach them?' My answer to that sort of thinking was 'You're going to get what you ask for. If you set the bar too low, you'll be a low-level performance.

New allegations against Ghosn concern payments to Saudi businessman

BEIJING – Fresh misconduct allegations brought by Tokyo prosecutors against ousted Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn center on the use of company funds to pay a Saudi businessman who is believed to have helped him out of financial difficulties, two company sources with knowledge of the matter said. Prosecutors arrested Ghosn for a third time on Friday, accusing him of aggravated breach of trust in transferring personal investment losses to the automaker. The prosecutors' statement said they believe that around October 2008, Ghosn was trying to deal with losses on paper of 1.85 billion yen ($16.6 million) incurred on a swap contract he had with a bank which it did not name. A person helped arrange a letter of credit for Ghosn and a company run by the person later received $14.7 million in Nissan funds in four installments between 2009 and 2012, the statement said, adding that the payments were made in Ghosn's and the person's interests. "By doing so, (Ghosn) behaved in a way that breached trust, and inflicted damage on the property of Nissan," the statement said. The statement also said Ghosn had earlier sought to have Nissan shoulder the appraisal losses directly. According to the Nissan sources who have knowledge of the company's probe into its former chief, the person who helped Ghosn is Khaled Al-Juffali, vice chairman of one of Saudi Arabia's largest conglomerates, E. A. Juffali and Brothers, and a member of the board at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority. He is also majority owner of a company called Al-Dahana which owns half of a regional joint venture called Nissan Gulf with the other half held by a wholly owned unit of Nissan Motor. Sheikh Khaled Juffali has no comment on this subject, according to an emailed statement from E. A. Juffali and Brothers. Ghosn's Tokyo-based lawyer, Motonari Otsuru, was unavailable for comment on this article, according to a person who answered the phone at his law office. A representative for the Ghosn family declined to comment. Other media have said Ghosn has through a lawyer denied that he shifted losses to Nissan and has told investigators that the four payments were for legitimate business purposes, including a reward for handling problems at Nissan dealers in Saudi Arabia. Tokyo prosecutors declined to comment. Asked about Ghosn's reported comments, a Nissan spokesman said: "We cannot comment on matters related to Ghosn's arrest for breach of trust.