
Here is the full transcript of Nissan Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn’s keynote address at CES 2017 Conference. The event took place at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino on January 5, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speakers at the event:
Gary Shapiro – President and CEO of CTA
Carlos Ghosn – Chairman and CEO, Nissan Motor Company
Dr. Maarten Sierhuis – Director, Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley
Takao Asami – SVP, Research and Development, Nissan Motor Company
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
Listen to the MP3 Audio: Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn Keynote Address at CES 2017
TRANSCRIPT:
Introducing speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome President and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, Gary Shapiro.
Gary Shapiro – President and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association
Good afternoon and welcome. Our guest today Mr. Carlos Ghosn is the leader of two global powerhouses in automotive technology: Nissan Motor Company and French automaker, Renault with more than 450,000 employees. Born in Brazil, he is a widely respected global business executive, fluent in Portuguese, Arabic, English and French. When he was named CEO of Renault Group in 2005, he became the very first person to run two global Fortune 500 companies simultaneously. In 2009, he had the title of Chairman of the Board of Renault. Mr. Ghosn is also the Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. This alliance has sold more than 8.5 million vehicles in 2015. That’s actually more than one in ten cars worldwide. And with Nissan’s acquisition of a controlling stake in October — a stake in Mitsubishi Motors in October, just a couple of months ago, that total should reach 10 million vehicles for the fiscal year 2016.
Mr. Ghosn is now also the Chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Company.
On our stage today, Mr. Ghosn and his Nissan colleagues will help us all look into the future, an amazing future that is not very far away. But before Mr. Ghosn get started let me step aside for a minute to give you a sneak preview of what’s ahead.
[Video Presentation]
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming to the CES stage Mr. Carlos Ghosn.
Carlos Ghosn – Chairman and CEO, Nissan Motor Company
Thank you. Thank you, Gary. Congratulation on 50 years of the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s amazing. In recent years, CES has started looking more and more like a motor show. The reverse is also true: motor shows are increasingly becoming technology showcases. Automakers once competed to unveil the most attractive appealing vehicles. We must still deliver on this classic expectation but now we are also competing to introduce new breakthrough technologies. This is just one of the many changes our industry is undergoing.
The disruptive triangle of autonomous drive technology, electric vehicles, connected cars and services mean we will see more change in the next 10 years than we did in the last 50. And it’s why I cannot, and nobody can really foresee in detail the future of our industry. But four predictions from industry analysts tell a little bit the story of where we are heading. By 2030, 15% of new vehicles sold could be fully autonomous, eyes-off, hands-free driving. No cars have been sold yet commercially with this capability.
In 2030, electric cars could account for 25% of new cars sold in urban areas. This is an increase from fewer than 1% sold globally in 2015. By 2030, more than one-fourth of all miles could be traveled via shared mobility. This is an increase from 4% of global miles traveled in 2015. By 2025, virtually all cars could be connected to the internet.
I personally believe these are conservative predictions. Consumers are expecting this change to happen fast, much sooner and Nissan is taking steps to deliver on them. For example, consumers are expecting a more relaxing and safer drive. Today more than 90% of accidents on the road are the consequence of human error. In the US, car fatalities have been recently increasing again to more than 35,000 in 2015. Distracted driving has been one of the significant causes. As the car takes over, more of the driving accidents and fatalities will be reduced and so should insurance premium. The Renault-Nissan alliance is committed to delivering 10 models with autonomous drive functionality by 2020 and you’ll hear more on this today.
In addition to safety, consumers tell us they want a more productive and connected drive. In the U.S., a driver in average spends one hour in the car per day, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road. Consumers want to be able to join a videoconference, talk with families, solve problems in partnership with technology. More and more they expect constant connection, even on the go especially with younger drivers. You’ll hear more about our plans to deliver on this today.
Consumers want more choices and more convenience. Yesterday I was authorized for the first time to sit behind the wheel of one of our autonomous cars in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley. It was a great experience and the glimpse into what’s to come. But like me, many people don’t want to give up driving completely. Instead what they want are option to decide when to drive and when to let the car take over.
Finally, consumers are asking for more efficiency without compromising excitement. Increasingly, consumers do not need to choose between them. Batteries are getting better, more affordable. Electric vehicle infrastructure is improving. In many countries, particularly in China, governments are super incentivizing the development of EV technologies. You’ll hear more about how Nissan is building on our leadership in electric and zero-emission products and what’s coming next.
Delivering on each of these expectations requires a new configuration of hardware, software, policies and business models. We are facing a transformation on the scale of moving from the horse and carriage to the automobile. Every automaker, including Nissan, is experimenting, prototyping and testing new technologies and new approaches. For example, we have test plan for every level of autonomous drive technology in the US, in Japan, in Europe and in China. Our goal is to accelerate the time it takes to inject these advancements into the heart of the mass market.
At the same time we are taking steps to make sure we as a company are prepared for what’s ahead. We recognize that in cities or even in suburban or rural areas, convenient and cheaper mobility services and alternative to public transportation will soon meet many people’s needs. We see this as an opportunity to expand our business to provide greater convenience and personalized mobility service for our customers. This includes how you experience a vehicle on the inside through good design, quality materials and connected technologies.
But it’s also about differentiating your entire customer experience no matter your relationship to the car. For example, in Europe we’ve launched a pilot that uses the power of online social networking to pair up compatible owners to part-own a car which is called the micro. Cars will be on the road this spring. While our priorities are expanding, we remain confident in our core business. We will continue to build cars for people who love to drive them and who prefer to own them.
Investing and developing the right technology bricks is critical to both the innovation of our business and delivering on the core business of car making. We have a significant advantage to most automakers. Through the Renault-Nissan alliance now with the addition of Mitsubishi Motors joining us, we sell 10 million vehicles a year, putting us among the top three automotive group in the world. This scale allows us to invest in the full spectrum of autonomous electric connected car technology and services without reducing other necessary investments. No shortcuts, no blind spots.
But even with these advantages no automaker can do everything at once and alone. We must develop the bricks of technologies and assemble them at certain points in time. When we do not have the technologies in house, we are partnering with startups, technology companies, social entrepreneurs to find the best innovation. And if the technology does not exist, we are creating it ourselves just as we did when we could not find an electric car battery that could deliver the kind of performance we needed. So we did ourselves. Today there are plenty of companies dedicated to building battery and doing it well, so we can invest elsewhere.
At Nissan, from the beginning we worked to bring the right technology for the full spectrum of our vehicle and the most amount of people. This takes more than innovation, it takes ingenuity and it’s exactly what we deliver through the Nissan Intelligent Mobility. It has three pillars: Nissan Intelligent Driving which is about making driving safer and more confident. This is our investment in autonomous drive technologies along with advanced driving systems and enhanced safety features. Nissan Intelligent Power is about making the drive more efficient without compromising excitement and performance. This is our investment in zero emission and electric vehicle technology. Finally, Nissan Intelligent Integration is about making driving more connected to the wider society, including the policy environment. This is our blueprint to achieving zero emissions, zero fatalities on the road.
But we know this technological breakthrough can benefit society off the roads as well — from helping to deal with climate change, to supporting aging populations, to unlocking local economic development and growth. Nissan Intelligent Mobility has the potential to improve billions of lives.
Over the next 30 minutes we will show you the technology that embodies the three pillars of Nissan Intelligent Mobility and which represents the step Nissan is taking to build the car and the car company of the future.
First, we are introducing a new innovation to accelerate how quickly autonomous and driverless cars can share the road. It is named for what it delivers: Seamless Autonomous Mobility or SAM. Developed with NASA technology, SAM bridges autonomous vehicles with onboard and cloud-based artificial intelligence, connected services and human support. It will make sure that vehicle used for customer services like robot taxis, robot delivery, shuttles, public transportation, alternatives operates smoothly and make quick decisions in unpredictable circumstances. This technology will make it possible for more autonomous vehicles to be on the road much sooner.
With the technology in hand to ensure a smoother transition to autonomous driving we are announcing that this year Nissan will lead an engagement with the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Japanese internet company DeNA to begin field test in Japan, targeting the development of driverless cars for commercial services. At first, the test will focus on perfecting the driverless technology. By 2020 we will expand the scope of testing to include mobility services in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. This is the first time we are announcing our target for a driverless vehicle for commercial uses.
While we continue to push forward on our autonomous drive strategy, we also are building our leadership in electric vehicles. Since 2010, more than 250,000 Nissan Leafs have been sold and it is the best-selling EV worldwide. Today we’re announcing that the next Leaf will be coming in the near future with a twist. It will be equipped with our ProPILOT autonomous drive technology.
Finally, we are taking further steps on connected car technology. The Renault-Nissan Alliance is continuing its partnership with Microsoft to accelerate the development and deployment of advanced connected technology. As one example, today we will demonstrate the potential of Microsoft personal assistant technology Cortana to make driving more productive and seamless.
I will now ask our colleagues to bring these technologies to life.
[Video Presentation]
Introducing speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Director of the Nissan Research Center, Silicon Valley, Dr. Maarten Sierhuis.
Dr. Maarten Sierhuis – Director, Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley
At Nissan Silicon Valley Research Center we are working to solve the fundamental challenge: How do we get autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles to peacefully coexist. For most automakers the focus is on getting the autonomous technology into the vehicles. And that’s important but it won’t get into the cars on the road in a way that is safe, seamless and accepted in today’s society.
At Nissan, we’re thinking about both the vehicle but also the integration and we have been thinking about it for a long time. But we’ve all been hard at work developing the technology to make it possible. Let me tell you a couple of stories to show you what I mean.
Here are two pictures that I took on different days but they each show a similar problem. The picture on the left shows a crew working on electricity for the San Francisco trolleys and the truck was blocking my path. Even though I couldn’t see around the truck I knew that I had to go left over the double yellow line to get by.
The picture on the right also shows the situation where my path was blocked unexpectedly. Only in this case the solution required me to go through a red light when waved on by the person directing traffic. As a human driver, these are annoying but simple problems to solve. At most there would be a few minutes but for an autonomous vehicle programmed to never cross the double yellow line or go through a red light, you could be waiting for hours, so maybe forever.
Let me tell you one other story. Once I was working with a vendor who sent me a high-definition map but it had a big problem. There was a missing piece of road. I laughed at that time but for an autonomous vehicle that depends on having detailed maps. This would be more than even inconvenience. These and other stories were the inspiration for creating seamless autonomous mobility or SAM. It’s going to make it possible for autonomous vehicle technology to live up to its full potential.
SAM will solve the inevitable challenge of what happens when your path gets blocked by unexpected obstacles, such as road construction, fallen trees, broken-down vehicles or anything else that makes us have to circumvent the normal rules of the road. SAM was developed from NASA technology and tested using a fleet of autonomous vehicles at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Dr. Eugene Tu, NASA Research Center director and Dr. Terry Fong, head of the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames have been instrumental in developing the NASA technologies that inspired SAM. They are both here with us today. And I want to thank them for being an invaluable partner in advancing Nissan’s autonomous system vehicles.
Why is NASA technology the perfect inspiration for solving this challenge? Think about the challenges they need to overcome exploring distant worlds, these places where detailed maps don’t exist. There is no road construction on Mars yet but there are unforeseen boulders, sand traps and deep craters that the vehicle can sketch stuck in and they do. So not only do Rovers need to be autonomous, they also need both the technology and human in the loop to help them navigate those obstacles in hostile environments. And the distances are simply too far away to control the rovers in real time. So NASA monitors and supervises autonomous Rovers from millions of miles away.
NASA technology enables a human in the loop approach supporting autonomous rovers at a distance. Large amounts of data are communicated back and forth from the rover to earth and vice versa. But enough of me telling you, let us show you.
Here we have Kelsey South. She is a researcher from our Silicon Valley Research Center and she’s playing a mobility manager. We’re going to use some actual footage of SAM in action a couple of days ago at NASA Ames Research Center. Let’s go to the video.
Here we see an autonomous vehicle traveling down the road. Pay no attention to the guy in the front seat, all autonomous vehicles testing must have a safety driver behind the wheel so he can take over if necessary. And when you look at the mobility manager screen, the autonomous vehicle is represented by this blue blip. As the vehicle drives along, just like in real life, it comes across a situation it doesn’t recognize. We see these three guys unloading a rover from a fan. Don’t you just hate it when they double-park those things? But the autonomous vehicle sees it as an obstacle in a place it should not be and does not know what to do. The vehicle automatically sends an alert to the mobility manager telling her that there is an autonomous vehicle that needs support. The mobility manager clicks on the alert to get a better idea of what’s going on and it opens up a second screen where we have access to the autonomous vehicle’s LIDAR, cameras and other onboard tools.
The mobility manager analyzes the situation, sees what the obstacle is and then paint some new path around the obstacle. The path is created in a way that maintain safety for everyone in the area. Once a safe path has been painted, the mobility manager will send the autonomous vehicle on its way. If this is all happening, other autonomous vehicles in the area are also communicating with SAM. The system learns and shares the information. Once the solution is found, it’s sent to all the other vehicles.
Here we can see another vehicle coming down the same road and approaching the same obstacle. The second vehicle alerts the mobility manager of the obstacle. They analyze the situation, see that it hasn’t changed and sent the vehicle on same path. Mobility continues, ordering the universe is restored or at least the long dispatch of the road.
Thank you, Kelsey. This kind of human-machine teamwork is developed from NASA’s technology to manage interplanetary rovers. For consumers, this will mean a new ecosystem of mobility that is safer and smarter, more efficient and more exciting. We know from studies that one of the biggest hurdles to driverless vehicles is customer acceptance. Many people told us that they would not take over the wheel if the drivers vehicles met an obstacle that could not navigate. So SAM will provide customers with peace of mind, knowing that while their vehicle remains autonomous people always stay in the loop. And in the meantime Sam will rapidly accelerate ecommerce for autonomous deliveries to a range of autonomous services that will improve our lives.
SAM is not just a luxury, it is a necessity. Show me an autonomous system without a person in the loop and I’ll show you a system that is practically useless, because even fully autonomous vehicles will not be able to handle every possible situation they encounter. The world is simply too complex. SAM will advance intelligent integration not by years but by decades. And not just for Nissan vehicles but for all vehicles, and consider this. In this demo you just saw the vehicle at NASA Ames Research Center was controlled by a mobility manager at our Nissan Silicon Valley Research Center which is only a few miles away from NASA Ames. Tomorrow at our booth you will see a live demo of vehicles at NASA Ames controlled not just by someone a few miles away but by a mobility manager from right here in Las Vegas, nearly 400 miles away.
We are excited to introduce this technology here at CES. But also know that it will be on the roads sooner than you think. Thank you and I hope to see you tomorrow at the Nissan booth.
Introducing speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Senior Vice-President, Research and Development, Nissan Motor Company Limited, Takao Asami.
Takao Asami – SVP, Research and Development, Nissan Motor Company
As Maarten just demonstrated, SAM will help communities integrate autonomous driving safely and seamlessly. But while SAM may be the next leap forward for bringing autonomous cars to our street it would not be our first step in this journey. Nissan’s strategy is to make driverless vehicles a reality, it’s based on four stages.
Stage 1 is autonomous drive for single lane on highways. We did this last August by introducing ProPILOT technology on the Nissan Serena family minivan in Japan. ProPILOT is an optional system for single-lane use on highways. When activated, it keeps the car centered by reading lane markers, measuring the distance between your car and the vehicle in the front and controlling the steering. 60% of customers who have purchased this model have already chosen this option in Japan. We will be bringing this technology to other models and to other regions.
Stage 2 is autonomous drive on multi-lane highways. This will have ability to change lanes autonomously and it will be available by 2018.
Stage 3 is autonomous city driving which we expect to be available by 2020.
The fourth and final stage is fully autonomous vehicles. To prepare for that we will increase our testing this year. As Mr. Ghosn said, Nissan is leading the Renault-Nissan Alliance engagement with the Japanese internet company DeNA to begin tests, targeting driverless vehicles in Japan this year. At first, our tests will focus on perfecting driverless vehicle technology in special zones in Japan. But by 2020 our tests will expand to also include commercial use of this technology for mobility services in the Tokyo metropolitan area. But fully integrating autonomous vehicles into society will only get as part of the way towards zero emissions and zero fatality mobility future. The other half of this equation is in how we power those vehicles and make electric cars the mainstream? Some called 2016 the tipping point year for EVs. It is the year that many of our industry peers stood up to make their own commitments to EV technology and an electric future. It’s about time.
Nissan is proud to be a pioneer in electric vehicles. In 2010 we launched the Nissan Leaf. It is the best-selling electric vehicle in the word. But then our competition said it would never work. Today almost all of them have planned to try and catch up to us. They have a long way to go. The Leaf is the best-selling EV in the word. Since 2010, 250,000 have been sold and they have driven 3 billion kilometers without a major issue with the batteries. That is far enough to make over six trip journeys to Mars. This is important to note, because while the range grabs the headline, quality also matters and we have proven that Nissan is still ahead of the pack.
The Nissan Leaf was just the first step. During the past six years we have taken many others on our journey towards zero emission future. But even if the EV is now going to mainstream, it is not yet the right technology for every customer’s needs. So we are providing diversity in our product lineup for low and zero emissions mobility. In 2014, we launched the first commercial EV, the Nissan NV200 and just this past fall, we began sales of a new innovation, the Note e-POWER in Japan. The e-POWER technology adds a 1.2 liter gasoline engine to charge the battery. So it eliminates the need for an external charger while offering the same high output. So far demand has outpaced expectations with more than 40,000 orders placed within the first nine weeks. During the months of November, it was the best-selling car in Japan.
In Brazil, we began test of an e-Bio Fuel-Cell technology on the road. It runs on bio-ethanol electric power produced by a solid oxide fuel cell or SOFC system. It uses bio-ethanol fuels, including those sourced from sugarcane in Brazil. Without the need to create new infrastructure, it has a great potential to drive market growth. These technologies are already on the roads today.
Recently, we also unveiled the Nissan BladeGlider prototype, a high-performance zero-emission vehicle. It proves that you don’t have to sacrifice the fun and excitement to develop zero emissions. While this is a concept vehicle that is not on our road, it is in our booth here at CES. And we invite you to experience it.
Our next step, as Mr. Ghosn said, in the near future we will introduce a new Nissan Leaf equipped with the ProPILOT technologies that have already taken Japan by storm in this Serena. This new Leaf with autonomous drive functionality embodies the [001 gasoline] engine and it is the latest advancement in Nissan intelligent power. We are also making significant advancements to make sure that EVs also provide alternative energy sources for communities. For example, right now in Japan, 4000 households use their EVs to manage their home energy and hundreds of EVs power buildings in Japan and Europe. In Maui, 600 Leafs help to manage the island’s energy. The result: EV owners are benefiting from the low home energy costs due to the surplus wind energy at night and solar energy in the daytime. At the same time entire communities are benefiting from having alternative sources of energy. This will help reduce emissions even further.
But while powering and integrating our cars is critical, we cannot forget about what still matters most to so many people: the drive. Here is what that could look like by 2020.
[Video Presentation]
Introducing speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Senior Vice-President, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services, Renault-Nissan Alliance, Ogi Redzic.
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
Good afternoon everybody. I’m Ogi Redzic, and I lead the Renault-Nissan Alliance’s work on connected cars and mobility services. As you can see here at CES and I’m sure you’ve all walked around the floor, it’s really really an exciting time to be doing this work. And I’m sorry — will you please excuse me for a minute? Seriously, what are you doing?
Cortana: I thought we could go for a drive!
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
I’d love to but I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.
Cortana: Your CES keynote! I know, I see that in your schedule. But I thought that you could do more demonstrating and less talking.
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
It’s something but —
Cortana: But I could demonstrate all of the features of autonomous mode. For example, I could bring up your Netflix cue, so you can continue binge watching Game of Thrones from earlier when you skipped speech rehearsal.
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
We were going to keep that between us, right? Let’s keep that.
Cortana: I can also plan for your arrival back here.
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
My arrival back here?
Cortana: Yes. After the demonstration I can reserve parking at the nearest charging station. So I’ll be fully charged after your speech.
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
That does sound tempting but —
Cortana: And since my records show that I am overdue for servicing, on the way back I can stop by the nearest Nissan service center and confirm that I’ll have the parts we need in stock.
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
I get it now. You’re thinking about your own needs. The second thought I think we should just stay right here. Can you hold off servicing on few more miles? I think I should get back to my speech.
Cortana: Can I make some edits?
Ogi Redzic – SVP, Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault Nissan Alliance
Thanks. I think I’ll take it from here.
So the absurdity aside, this is a conversation that any of us could soon be having with our vehicles. It will require not just new technologies but also new way of thinking about our vehicles. Instead of seeing cars, it’s simple harder on rubber, it stays more or less the same after you purchase it. We’re now thinking of them as dynamic objects that can be improved to meet the changing needs of their owners, because connectivity and customization go hand-in-hand.
The Renault-Nissan Alliance is proud to lead the way forward to this new era connected cars. Our aim is to build a single global platform for different services that can be accessed anywhere anytime in the car, on the web or through mobile devices. To accelerate the connected car revolution, the Alliance is working with leading technology partners to create the right human machine interface. One of those partners is Microsoft to help us develop the next generation of connectivity technologies, including a virtual personal assistant technology which many of you are already familiar with: Cortana.
When you enter the vehicle, Cortana could act as your doorway to a wide range of services to make your life easier and your drive more exciting. Another advantage of working with Microsoft is their expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning which make these services better and better over time.
I’m very proud to have Peggy Johnson, Microsoft Executive Vice President for Business Development here with us today. Peggy, right there. Peggy has been instrumental to our partnership with Microsoft and to deploying technologies like Cortana. Thank you, Peggy for your leadership and your partnership with the Alliance.
Now let’s all see how Cortana works out in a while.
[Video Presentation – Cortana]
Cortana shows what will soon be possible with connected car technology. But the real potential is even bigger, because this partnership is not just about one technology, it represents our vision for how the customer experience inside the vehicle is evolving. As more miles become shared miles and more cars become autonomous, it will be important to streamline user preferences across different vehicles just as you can do across other connected devices today.
Being fully connected is only one part of the coming revolution. It’s also about how we combine the intelligence and the intuitive abilities of the driver with the technologies and the AI inside the car. But as the car starts to take over more and more of the driving, both your eyes and your ears will be dedicated to other things from in-vehicle entertainment to teleconferences.
So we’re working with Bosch to imagine the solutions for consumers at each point of this evolution. This means going beyond having a great speaker system to blast your favourite playlist down the strip. [Music] Not now, not now.
We’re also thinking of audio as a tool to make navigation more intuitive or is an extra set of safety warnings. For example, if something approaches you from the left side of the car, you will hear a warning in your left ear. The system can also control the direction and distance of the sound, generate 360-degree sound field around the driver. Soon you may be able to play different music for different passengers without the need for headphones. Or it could just mean turning down Gangsta’s Paradise when you’re calling your mom. Please now — not now!
So we’re combining connected cars with the autonomous drive in a full new experience. This is what tomorrow holds and the building blocks are already in place today. This is the core of Nissan intelligent driving. Thank you.
Introducing speaker: Please welcome back, Mr. Carlos Ghosn.
Carlos Ghosn – Chairman and CEO, Nissan Motor Company
Thank you. Thank you, Ogi. Thank you, Asami san and thank you, Maarten and thank you to our partners, the technology and partnership that we have unveiled today are the next step in our intelligent mobility roadmap. These innovations both eliminate and accelerate our path to zero emissions, zero fatality and they show how we are working to harness new trends and serve customer in new ways. We cannot do it all at once, nor can we do it alone. The biggest transformations will not take place inside our vehicles or even inside our companies, rather that will take place on the stage of the world cities. From population growth to the increase in elderly population to the stresses on transportation infrastructure, cities are facing challenges that could be solved in part by mobility solutions.
Many of the innovations we discussed today will ease congestion, increase green space, lower energy costs among other benefits. To align technology policies and planning automakers and cities must work as partner. To that end, today I’m pleased to announce that Nissan will become the first automotive platform partner for 100 resilient cities pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation. 100 resilient cities is a global nonprofit working to help cities build resilience to physical, social and economic challenge. Together we will help some of the world’s most innovative cities lay the groundwork for this new and exciting technology.
As the first step we will bring cities together for an open discussion to identify the biggest challenges they face in planning for future mobility. From there we will partner with select cities as living labs to test and develop technologies, including autonomous and electric vehicles — vehicle to grid charging and SAM. We invite others to join us as well from tech partners to e-commerce companies, ride-hailing and car sharing platforms and social entrepreneur who can help us test and develop new vehicles and services and make sure everyone has access to the latest technologies and services that bring value to their lives.
But most of all we want you to join us, the people in this room and those who are tuning in from around the world. You know the power to leverage technology for the purpose of improving the lives of billions of people, that’s what intelligent mobility means to us. But we want to know what it means to you. Tell us. We are listening. Thank you.
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