There are two big pieces of news from the Hub Pavilion in Davos today. The first is that the sun’s been shining all day, a real lift after the grey gloom that’s engulfed this mountaintop town since we’ve been here.
The sun lifted the mood at the 2012 World Economic Forum, too, where Microsoft Founder Bill Gates announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was to commit a further US$750m to a global fund to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
The second piece of news is also weather-related… in a way!
There was a mini whirlwind down at the Davos Hub Pavilion, our home to for the week. Our Chairman and CEO, Carlos Ghosn, made a flying visit to see the first public application in Europe of LEAF-to-Home technology – energy stored in a Nissan LEAF battery is powering the hobs keeping pans of hot chocolate on the boil, ready to be dished out to passers-by.
He stayed still long enough, however, to answer a few burning questions from the Alliance’s Matt Loader. Matt wanted to know if the huge investments in new Nissan manufacturing facilities in Mexico and Brazil would be to the detriment of investment in the Alliance’s ‘home’ markets of Europe and Japan (answer: no, it’s good news).
Matt also quizzed the CEO on the Alliance’s EV future - positive with plenty of growth potential.
As for the rest of the day, it’s been business as usual with visitors taking test drives in the fleet of Alliance EVs while the hot chocolate cup-count now stands at more than 600. For each cup consumed, the Renault-Nissan Alliance is donating US$1 to Nike’s Mata No Peito programme to save and preserve the Amazon rainforest.
We’ll be back tomorrow with the CEO’s video interview and other news. Make sure you come back and check it all out.