COMMITMENT is one of Carlos Ghosn's favourite words. He makes commitments himself and he expects his senior managers in the Renault-Nissan alliance to do the same. His latest, and one of his boldest, is that Renault and Nissan will lead the car industry in developing profitable zero-emission vehicles.

In recent months Renault-Nissan has teamed up with Project Better Place, a Silicon Valley start-up, to introduce all-electric vehicles and a network of charging points in Israel and Denmark by 2011. Now Nissan is going further. Speaking at a media event in Portugal this week, Mr Ghosn said that the time for the mass-market zero-emission car has come. Nissan plans to launch a battery-powered car in America in 2010 and by 2012 the Renault-Nissan alliance will offer a complete range of electric vehicles in every large car-market. And these new battery-powered cars, it claims, will work out less expensive than equivalent petrol models.