He is the CEO of two of the world's largest car companies and a veteran of the automotive industry. This week ‘Talk Asia' meets the Lebanese-Brazilian-French businessman Carlos Ghosn at the Nissan headquarters in Yokohama, Japan. Nicknamed 'Le Cost Killer', Ghosn shares with CNN Correspondent Anna Coren how orchestrating the financial turnaround at Nissan in the late 1990s gave him superstar status in Japan, and even resulted in a manga comic being made about him in 2002. The CEO also discusses how Nissan is recovering from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, misconceptions about how the Japanese people adapt to change, and his passion for green technology in the motor industry.

Please find excerpts from the interview with Carlos Ghosn below. The full interview transcript will be available upon request after the first airing of the show. ‘CNN's Talk Asia' must be credited for any use of this material. 

ON SAVING NISSAN FROM BANKRUPTCY

CARLOS GHOSN, CEO OF NISSAN AND RENAULT: "When I arrived in Nissan in 1999, two turnarounds before me failed. They failed because they were watered down. There was too much complacency...At the end of the day, if you don't put enough force into a turnaround, you don't get the results. So I had the strength of an outsider. I was an outsider to Japan, an outsider to Nissan, so I was able to achieve something that was known in a certain way but needed some coherence, some good shape, priorities, something that would be attractive and that people would consider could be successful."

GHOSN: "There was a lot of skepticism and criticism at the beginning. There was opposition when we announced the plan, but I always had the benefit of the doubt. The opposition never reached a level where you could not work. And as results came quickly, little by little, people massively joined the effort of Nissan. Nissan became a symbol of reform in Japan. I don't think you can achieve turnarounds easily. You know you're going to have to throw things against the tide. You know you're going to have to do things that people did not do, not because they didn't think about it, but because it represents a lot of risks or it represents something that society around you would not accept."

ON THE JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI

GHOSN: "I think the country is recovering extremely well from the earthquake. It's absolutely unbelievable that with the amount of damage the company has faced, that the recovery has been so quick and so thorough."

GHOSN: "We had one of our plants within 40 kilometers of the Fukushima power plant where there was suspicion of leaks from the nuclear power plant. I visited it because I wanted the plant to revive. And I wanted to make sure, we got some specialist telling us there was no risk, because I don't want to put my own employees at risk. But then when I was convinced that there was no risk, I went there with my management team and we gathered all the employees and it shored up the efforts to restart the plant as soon as possible."

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LEADERSHIP IN JAPAN

GHOSN: "Japan has a formidable capacity to implement, execute quickly, in a way that's extremely organized... often there is a lack of leadership because people, in order to move in the right direction there needs to be an explanation of what needs to be done, they need a vision about what needs to be done. And whenever the vision is clear and the explanation is convincing, things go very very fast in Japan."

GHOSN: "People have a conception that change in Japan is difficult. It's not. It is difficult if people don't see your vision. If they don't see your strategy and don't see your action-plan then yes it's not going to happen."

ON DEVELOPING ELECTRIC VEHICLES

GHOSN: "Today the offer is extremely limited for an electric car. But the Renault-Nissan alliance are going to be [putting] a lot of cars on the street. We take a commitment that by 2016, more than 1.5 million electric cars will be sold by the alliance on seven to eight models that we're going to offer. So we're at the beginning of the offensive. So far so good."

GHOSN: "I think this is the ultimate technology because there is zero emission. We are also developing new technologies within the zero emission strategy - the fuel cell cars - but they are not ready yet to go on the market. The costs are too high."

Highlights of Carlos Ghosn's interview with ‘Talk Asia' will be available online at www.cnn.com/talkasia.

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