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Ghosn hid part of Nissan salary, fearing he'd be forced out of Renault, exec testifies

TOKYO — Carlos Ghosn hid part of his compensation at Nissan because he feared the French government would force him out of Renault if it discovered how much he earned, an executive at the Japanese carmaker told a Tokyo court on Thursday. Hari Nada, a former Nissan vice president in charge of legal affairs, has been described as organizer of a putsch against Ghosn and is a key whistleblower in the case brought by Japanese prosecutors against the former Nissan and Renault boss, who was arrested in 2018. Nada was testifying at the trial of former Nissan executive Greg Kelly, who is charged with helping Ghosn hide 9.3 billion yen ($89 million) in compensation over eight years through deferred payments after Japan introduced new rules requiring executives to disclose payments above 1 billion yen. Kelly has pleaded not guilty. He has been on bail in Japan since his release from jail in 2018 and is facing trial without Ghosn because his co-accused fled to Lebanon in December 2019. Ghosn, who was one of the world's most prominent auto bosses as head of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, has denied wrongdoing. He says he is the victim of a boardroom coup by former Nissan colleagues worried he would push through a merger between Nissan and Renault, its largest shareholder. Nada told the court that Ghosn had concealed his true compensation because he feared the repercussions in France. He said Kelly had given him this information. "He didn't want to be fired. If he paid himself what he wanted and that was disclosed, the French state would have felt obliged to fire him," said Nada, who agreed to cooperate with Japanese prosecutors in return for immunity from prosecution. France's economy ministry declined to comment. Nada was demoted following Ghosn's arrest. Ghosn, who is also charged with enriching himself through $5 million in payments to a Middle East car dealership, and for a breach of trust for temporarily transferring personal financial losses to his employer's books, also denies any wrongdoing. A former Nissan chief operating officer offered another perspective on Tuesday, outlining the pains company officials took to hide GhosnÂ’s pay, because they worried about his quitting for a rival. “Carlos Ghosn is a world-class business leader and CEO,” said Toshiyuki Shiga, testifying at the trial of his former colleague Greg Kelly, charged with under-reporting GhosnÂ’s compensation.

How and why Nissan nearly killed off Infiniti

Launched in 1990, Infiniti was expected to be Japan's answer to BMW (Lexus would end up chasing Mercedes-Benz). Yet things went awry almost right out of the gate. Overlooking the fledgling automaker's now infamous early marketing campaign, its product line over the past twenty-four years has been a roller coaster ride of strong hits (Q45, FX35 and G35) and frustrating misses (M30, I30 and QX4).
In a recent interview with Ward's Auto at the Detroit Auto Show, Nissan Executive Vice President Andy Palmer revealed that the company's luxury brand was almost cancelled by CEO Carlos Ghosn as unnecessary. Infiniti, like most premium marques owned by a volume manufacturer, had fallen into the trap of losing autonomy and pushing its high-end product just like its mainstream models.
The one obvious exception to this industry blunder, said Palmer, was VW Group's Audi brand. Realizing that Audi's impressive comeback over the past two decades shamed even that of actor Robert Downey Jr., Nissan hired Audi veteran Johan de Nysschen to bring Infiniti to its intended glory - and protect it from extinction. Check out the complete interview here.

Nissan alters all CVTs to act less like a stretched rubberband

Among automotive enthusiasts, no one seems to hold a neutral opinion when it comes to continuously variable transmissions. CVTs are either praised for their ability to boost fuel economy or chided for their occasionally poor driving dynamics. Nissan is among the masters of these un-shifting gearboxes in the US, and it uses them in many vehicles in its lineup. However, for the 2015 model year, several models are getting a software update to make their CVTs a bit more like a conventional automatic.
To give drivers the option of feeling gearshifts while on the road, Nissan is adding its D-Step Shift Logic feature to the CVTs in multiple vehicles. Steve Powers, Nissan's senior manager of powertrain performance, told Autoblog the system forces the transmission to "hold a ratio and then shift" to simulate the way that a traditional automatic would. It's simply a change in software, but the company "can't do it to older CVTs," he said, because it would require changes to transmission logic, as well. According to Automotive News, the upgrade is coming to the 2015 Versa, Versa Note (pictured above), Sentra, V6-equipped Altima, Pathfinder and Quest. "We're rolling it out to all programs," said Powers.
Interestingly, buyer perception appears to be pushing the upgrade. John Curl, a Nissan North America regional product manager, told Automotive News that the decision to add the tech partially comes because some owners are bothered that the CVTs aren't changing gears. According to Powers, D-Step "avoids the rubber band feel," that many drivers didn't like. The different sensation of these transmissions seems like something consumers would notice during the test drive, or that the salesperson would inform them about. The same issue cropped up last year when the company was facing customer satisfaction problems among new buyers customers' unfamiliarity with the gearboxes.