LA Auto Show Day 1: The Sky Is Falling, but at Least Its Green

 Two recurring themes were rolling off the lips of seemingly every auto exec during Day One of the 2008 L.A. auto show: the bleak state of global auto industry, along with a steady stream of commitments to building greener cars.

Carlos Ghosn, Nissan/Renault CEO got the ball rolling with his version of the day’s bad-news/green-news approach during his breakfast address to us journalists. In it, Ghosn touched on the Nissan’s position the global economic crisis. To paraphrase, it sounded something like “yes the economy sucks right now, but people will always drive cars, so in the meantime we’ll continue to build cool ones like the new Z, Cube, and GT-R.”

As for the green news, Ghosn talked up Nissan’s alternative fuel strategy and announced a new electric vehicle partnership with the state of Oregon. The lack of detail provided suggests this might be more hand waving than sky clearing, but we’ll see.

But one thing he was pretty clear about, however, was this tidbit about the future of the automobile: “The end-game is zero emissions.”

More substantial treats were left to the Nissan press conference immediately following Ghosn’s remarks. There, Nissan’s global-design chief Shiro Nakamura introduced the funky Cube.

There were humorous bits in the presentation — comparing the Cube to a “bulldog in sunglasses” and descriptions of the Scion fighter as “witty, fun, yet totally square,” but overall I had a distinct feeling of deja vu.; It was a page right out of Scion’s playbook, which isn’t surprising given the market Nissan’s targeting.