KEY POINTS:
For Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of the Renault Nissan partnership, the stakes could not be higher: "We must have zero-emission vehicles. Nothing else will prevent the world from exploding".
Such a conflagration for the planet, and presumably for his company, is to be avoided by a rapid and expensive programme of investment in green vehicles.
Mr Ghosn wants to see a new generation of fully electric cars that will compete bumper-to-bumper with conventional models for performance, comfort and refinement.
The traditional drawbacks of electric vehicles - as seen on European milk floats and in little curiosities such as the G-Wiz city car - are a low range and poor cruising speed. Acceleration is usually surprisingly brisk, as electric motors are usually very "torquey"; but they tend not to get beyond 60km/h or be much fun to drive.
Renault-Nissan hopes that newer lithium-ion battery technology, of the type seen in laptops, rather than old-fashioned nickel metal hydrides will provide the necessary technical leap forward.
The car maker is collaborating with Project Better Place, a Californian firm, to produce a network of all-electric cars and, crucially, thousands of charging points, in Denmark and Israel, which were chosen for their compactness and low average journey lengths.
Ford tried out a similar idea in Norway a few years ago, the Think! project, but it was abandoned for lack of demand.
The Project Better Place/Renault scheme should be operational by 2011.
Beyond that, Mr Ghosn wants to see his brands, which include Infiniti, a BMW-wannabe "prestige" make, Samsung cars in Korea and Dacia of Romania, offer a complete range of electric vehicles in all territories, with retail sales starting in 2012 with prices from around $25,000 dollars (NZ$33,100).
It is quite a U-turn for Mr Ghosn.
In the 1990s he became the most successful auto executive of his generation by turning around two companies that had become basket cases - Renault and Nissan.
With fresh models and a new "partnership" approach to merger - so that Nissan retained much of its own culture, engineering and management, despite Renault's controlling 44 per cent stake - a new force in the global industry was forged, almost down to the force of personality of one man.
A Brazilian of Lebanese descent, Mr Ghosn's crown has slipped of late, as his companies issued a profit warning last year, and the product-led revival has faltered.
Nowhere is this more evident than at Nissan, which began to present itself as a specialist in SUVs, especially in the key North American market, just as they started going out of fashion.
Tougher commercial times and the promise of green technologies seem to have propelled Mr Ghosn on to a different road to growth.
But Renault-Nissan is way behind the competition, despite the promise of "commitment" and investment from an improved group profit performance.
Renault made US$2.7bn last year, which would pay for a couple of new model ranges, but perhaps not the revolution Mr Ghosn has in mind.
General Motors' Chevrolet Volt, technically a hybrid but close to being all-electric and unveiled to much applause at the Detroit motor show last year, seems much closer to the market place and the mainstream than Renault's experiments.
A remarkable initiative from Nissan with the Indian Mahindra group is to produce a fuel-efficient $2,500 car to rival the Tata Nano in one clear move forwards.
Mr Ghosn recognises the environmental danger of billions of Chinese and Indians owning and driving cars.
But overhauling an entire technological infrastructure - the internal combustion engine and the traditional petrol/diesel filling station - is something that Renault long tried to ignore.
Even Peugeot, long wedded to diesels and dismissive of new technologies, is changing gear.
PSA's boss Christian Streiff has ordered his engineers to prioritise diesel-hybrids.
Toyota and Honda have pioneered usable, reliable petrol hybrid vehicles, which regenerate engine braking effort to provide electric power to move the vehicle silently and cleanly at low speeds and can add an extra boost to the petrol engine when required.
Toyota is now developing a "plug in" version of their Prius model, which promises impressively green credentials and a wide range.
Honda's FCX Clarity, a family-size saloon that uses revolutionary hydrogen fuel cell technology, will be launched and leased to selected users in California this year.
General Motors' electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, promises to normalise the electric car, previously associated with milk floats and tiny bizarre curiosities such as the G-Wiz town car.
BMW, Mercedes-Benz and General Motors are jointly developing hybrid passenger cars.
Renault-Nissan has arrived late.
A number of alternative technologies will become available to consumers, who can select which ones suite them best.
At the top end, it is difficult to see a Ferrari driver being happy with anything less than a traditional V12, or a Bentley with fewer than eight cylinders.
City cars might split between electrics and ultra-efficient small petrol or diesel models, such as Volkswagen's "Bluemotion" version of its Polo, which delivers just 99g/km of CO2, beating small electrics when emissions at power stations and the Polo's superior performance are factored in.
Larger family cars, executive saloons and people carriers might be best-suited to the hydrogen fuel cell, which needs more room for its gas tank and fuel cells.
Smaller family cars might be plug-in hybrids, with the option of running those on bio-fuels, if they can be made greener and more sustainable.
Delivery vans could easily go electric, as the Coventry-built Modec, used by Tesco and others for home deliveries, demonstrates.
In the meantime, more and more mass-market cars are becoming available as "green" models, tuned for maximum economy - Ford's Econetic range has joined the VW Bluemotion sub-brand in offering that little bit more greenness and economy for the Focus buyer.
As to the world exploding, much depends on how different technologies are applied.
For example, an electric car that used power entirely generated by the burning of coal might be less green than the best small cars of today.
As the chart above shows, such vehicles still generate sizeable emissions.
Bio-fuels are fiercely controversial, but so called "second generation" fuels that use the waste from crops rather than the food crops themselves could be much friendlier to the planet than the current crop.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars could be fatally compromised, on environmental grounds, if the hydrogen requires too much power to make and transport n and that power is generated using fossil fuels.
There are few definitive guides to any of this, but, as the graphic shows, the electric car is probably the one with the greatest potential.
So Mr Ghosn may well be right - but he will need to put his foot down.
- THE INDEPENDENT
