Nissan is planning an extremely cheap and basic vehicle for emerging markets

Tapping into the increasingly booming emerging markets is one thing, but from what I can see Nissan is planning a solution that is pretty much desperate and even hard to believe. Carlos Ghosn has commented that the brand intends to start drawing the first lines of a range of cars that would cost less than 4,000 euros.

You can imagine that a vehicle at that price will be literally bare-bones. That is to say, you can count yourself lucky if the car comes with a steering wheel, wheels and pedals. However, Ghosn has commented that this is the solution that will serve an extremely important portion of the emerging-country market.

These cars, which would hit the market in 2014 under the Datsun brand, will have no safety systems, not even airbags, and will be extremely basic mini-cars, in the style of the Tata Nano. And if we give credence to the Wall Street Journal article, they won’t even have mufflers on the exhaust pipes (sic).

To add to the worry of those of us who are truly interested in safety being important even in mini-cars, Nissan has said that in principle they will not sell them in Europe or the USA, but they could eventually arrive. In other words, they could arrive if sales keep going the way they are now.

Ghosn’s idea was not well received by the whole top management of Nissan, since some believe this is a colossal mistake, “as big as the one with the Nissan Leaf”. Others think Ghosn is wrong in believing that in developing countries people would buy any car at all; quite the contrary: even though their regulations do not demand the same requirements, customers in developing countries would not accept “half-assembled” cars.

Via | Wall Street Journal