Prime time for batteries

Forecasts vary on how many, and when, electrified vehicles will hit the streets, but auto and battery makers are ramping up efforts like there's no tomorrow.

Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has taken a strong and bold position on the future of electric vehicles. He and other stakeholders in the company can only hope that battery expert Menahem Anderman is terribly wrong in projecting a much less electrifying future.

Earlier this year at the Advanced Automotive Batteries Conference (which his consulting company, Advanced Automotive Batteries, administers every year), Anderman forecasted a global EV market of about 150,000 total vehicles in 2020. For Renault and Nissan, his forecast is 45,000 EV sales in 2020, a figure that he said is 10 times less than what Ghosn projects.