Ghosn: the end of ownership is not near

Renault boss Carlos Ghosn sees no threat in the likes of Uber and the rise of shared mobility. “A lot of people think this is substitution. It's not - it's addition," he said last week at a Bloomberg conference in New York. "The traditional business of building cars and selling cars and owning cars is going to continue."

Thank you, China

In fact, even though Europe, the US and Japan are saturated markets, Ghosn still sees a lot of ownership potential in countries like China. "The growth is going to be here, because the first thing people aspire to is an autonomous way of transportation," said a confident Ghosn.

The Renault-Nissan alliance has outpaced VW and Toyota this year. From an estimated 10.5 million cars and commercial vehicles sold this year, Ghosn sees his company grow to over 14 million units by 2022. DRAC, Renault’s Chinese joint-venture with Dongfeng, is to play an important role in realizing these objectives.

On October 31, DRAC released its 2022 vision in Wuhan. Thanks to an expanded and quality-oriented dealer network, plus a lineup comprising 9 local products – mainly SUVs, but also 3 electric cars – the French-Chinese OEM aims at 400,000 deliveries per annum in 5 years’ time.

Shared is cheaper

Uber’s chief product officer has a different view on the evolution of car sales. He reckons that if a car is utilised for 80 to 90 percent of the time because it is shared, it will ultimately make transport a lot cheaper than when you own a car and only use it 4 percent of the time, as is the case today.

"When you get to those kinds of utilizations what you see happen is prices go way down," he told Bloomberg. "So why would you own your own car? It's just a hobby at that point. It just doesn't make sense.” 

Picture copyright: Renault, 2017