Renault-Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn is bullish on China and electric cars, says Nissan may have to build fewer cars in Japan and still harbors hopes of adding a third major partner to the Renault-Nissan alliance. Here are some highlights of an interview with Mr. Ghosn by Eyes on the Road columnist and Wall Street Journal Senior Editor Joseph B. White. Mr. Ghosn was in Washington, D.C. at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council conference.

On the performance of electric cars:

“The (Nissan) LEAF (electric family sedan) will go from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than 10 seconds, which for a car in this category is very strong performance. There is still an expectation that an electric car has to be tedious and boring slow moving car. It’s not at all.”

On Nissan’s growth in China:

“China in 2009 is the largest car market in the world. It may become our largest market, maybe by 2011. In China, we have a new plant and we are lacking products.

“It’s going to change our footprint. When you have a market that represented practically nothing for us 10 years ago becoming our largest market,  you are building capacity and building suppliers, where in other markets you have to manage overcapacity.”

On Nissan’s future in Japan:

“The only capacity I am worried about is in Japan, because the yen is very strong. With the yen at 89 to the dollar, we have a very big exposure to the yen. We want to reduce it as much as possible, and the only way to reduce it is sourcing and assembling cars outside Japan.

“I don’t think any car manufacturer would take the initiative to close a plant. What you can do is idle production lines in existing plants. Instead of 400,000 cars a year, it goes down to 300,000 or it goes down to 200,000 or 150,000. That’s very likely to happen, if you are on a trend where you think the yen is going to be strong.”

On adding a third major partner to the Renault-Nissan Alliance:

 “I still think it would be great. But you cannot do these things when your stakeholders are scared. The day you make a move like this you want it to be seen more as an opportunity than a risk. Today it would be seen overwhelmingly as a risk.”

Orszag said that the health-care overhaul needs four main pillars that will put the system on a more sustainable path: (1) deficit neutrality, (2) an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans, (3) an independent Medicare commission, and (4) delivery system reforms. These issues were pointed out in a letter signed by top economists, including two former Congressional Budget Office directors and a former Medicare chief.

The budget chief said that the four main issues will underpin a better system, but “execution is crucially important to success.” Orszag, a former CBO director, pointed to an example: “I like to say if CBO was analyzing CBO it would say it’s a feckless organization.” He said that the organization is respected because of how well it was executed in its early days.

Orszag said that a lot of uncertainties remain about what will work, but the framework of the legislation will provide a basis to provide the information necessary to make long-term changes. Pilot programs will succeed or fail and provide a path for successful changes.

He said that the Medicare Commission and excise tax on so-called Cadillac plans will be key ways to bring down costs to the entire system through indirect effects. Even if companies cut Cadillac plans, it will result in higher wages, which would then come back to the government as tax revenue. Meanwhile, changes made by the Medicare Commission would trickle down into the rest of the system. Medicare is such a major part of the health-care industry that changes made to accommodate it, become part of standard care.

Orszag acknowledged that budget deficits of 10% of gross domestic product are unsustainable and said that next year’s outline will show a path to get deficits down to 3% of GDP. He wouldn’t speculate on how that would be done, declining to comment on whether it could be achieved without raising taxes on those making less than $250,000.

Policies offered by the heads of American Express Co., Marriott International Inc., Westpac Banking Corp. and others ran the gamut from tax reform to eliminating the concept of “too big to fail,” but had job creation as the main goal.

“Look through the job creation lens for every policy,” Kenneth Chenault, American Express’s chairman and chief executive, said. “All of the policies should be related to job creation.”

The group called for policies to stimulate job growth at small and medium-sized business, making sure that credit is available for innovation. The panel also suggested that the White House hire a policy adviser with a corporate background to help them understand job creation.

The policies should focus on “not demonizing success, and not overpenalizing failure,” said Gail Kelly, chief executive of Westpac Banking.

Shaking uncertainty from business leaders and consumers also emerged as a priority. Pending federal legislation involving energy, taxes and health care is making it difficult for companies to forecast future growth plans.

The group also called for broad tax reform that encourages savings and investment, while discouraging consumption and accumulating debt.

The chieftains also want to eliminate the concept of “too big to fail,” which would reduce both the likelihood of and the expected cost of the collapse of a financial firm. Putting taxpayer money on the line adds another dose of uncertainty to the public.

Federal energy policy should promote all domestic energy sources from wind to offshore oil and natural gas production, while encouraging its efficient use, a panel of executives concluded at the annual WSJ CEO Council Tuesday.

“We need it all. We have a lot of demand out there. To keep [energy] secure and affordable, we need to develop it all,” said Lynn Elsenhans, chief executive of Sunoco Inc.

The panel of chief executives from power, refining and transportation companies agreed that a wider understanding needs to exist about how a heavy reliance on fossil fuel will continue for decades to come.

Members didn’t want the federal government to pick winners and losers when it comes to energy sources and technologies. But the panel expressed support for more government intervention to increase efficiency, and it doesn’t see reductions coming without new policies, including building codes, tax credits and accelerated depreciation.

They saw a role for government in siting high-voltage transmission lines to move electricity –including renewable generation such as wind and solar in rural areas — and support more federal authority to remove hurdles to developing projects. The panel also wants to see an increasing diversity in the energy sources used for transportation, incorporating electricity and natural gas.

“Oil is not the enemy, but too much dependence on oil becomes something which is very precarious,” said Carlos Ghosn, chairman of Nissan Motor Co. and Renault SA.

The panel had more trouble coming to an agreement on the leading energy topic right now in Congress — climate-change legislation. The members named it as a top issue but didn’t endorse a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon dioxide emissions linked to climate change. Instead, they agreed any regulations should come from Congress rather than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and recognize the central role fossil fuels will play for decades to come.

A list of priorities was issued by CEOs from Aetna Inc., Novartis AG and the Cleveland Clinic. Other priorities highlighted by the group included promoting integrated care and encouraging healthy behavior.

Later Tuesday, the full conference of nearly 100 CEOs will vote on the priorities suggested by the four task forces on health care, education, energy and economy.

Executives spent part of the day Tuesday hashing out priorities on a handful of key topics. Aetna Chief Executive Ronald A. Williams said the first priority that emerged in health-care talks was reforming the health-payment system.

A huge part of that reform would entail moving toward “bundled payments” in which hospitals and doctors are paid together and not necessary rewarded for more and more office visits or hospital admissions. The group suggested tying payments to outcomes.

Rep. Jim Cooper (D., Tenn.), responding to the recommendations, applauded to the discussion, but said, “The bad news is you’re late to the party.” He pointed to the importance of measuring outcomes. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he said. But on the other side of the coin: “If you don’t measure it, you don’t deserve to manage it.”

The CEOs focused on the need for broad changes. “The basic notion is to begin to think about trying to pay physicians and others to be responsible in a reasonable way for the care of the population,” Williams said.

On similar notes, the panel talked about requiring doctors and hospitals to publicly report patient outcomes and changing regulations to allow doctors and hospitals to work together.

Two topics discussed a year ago were touched on again, Novartis Chief Executive Daniel Vasella said in citing the recommendations about holding patients accountable by rewarding healthy behavior and penalizing unhealthy habits, and seeking malpractice reform that caps awards and legal fees while creating health courts.

One example of encouraging healthy behavior is encouraging people to stop smoking, a habit in the current system that could factor unfavorably for smokers seeking health insurance. Stopping insurers from focusing on members’ health status works financially when more people are brought into the system, Williams noted.

“We’re big supporters of eliminating the use of health status,” he said. “We just need a mechanism to find a way to bring almost everybody into the system.”

In January, Slim loaned the New York Times $250 million in exchange for a 7% stake in the company, which has struggled with rising costs and lower circulation. While other newspapers have struggled with the transition to an electronic format, Slim said the New York Times has done a good job with the move. Charging for access to some of the content is the next step.

“There are many ways to do that,” Slim told Dow Jones Newswires on the sidelines of the WSJ CEO Council conference in Washington. “You need to offer customers what they want, when they want it.”

While there are several models, including a subscription format or pay-per-story, Slim declined to specify which would work best.

During the first day of the conference, Slim said he still sees the New York Times as a good business, expressing his confidence in the value of the news. He is the third-largest shareholder of the company.

Still, Slim said advertising remains important. He said advertising would improve as the economy improves, but didn’t specify his views on its current state.

On the U.S. telecommunications industry, Slim said it was a mistake for the U.S. government to break up the original AT&T into regional monopolies. Regulators should have broken it up into two or three national companies, he added.

“That’s why [the U.S. telcos] were out of the overseas market,” he said. “They would have been global companies.”

The polling software was unveiled during a morning introduction by Deputy Managing Editor Alan Murray, who began the session by running through some numbers. Combined, the companies represented at the conference have a market cap of nearly $1.9 trillion.

The shares of the companies track the general trends of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq, though the declines weren’t as steep last year and the bounceback wasn’t quite as strong as the broader indexes. The CEO Council index, composed of share prices of companies at the conference, is off 16% from 2007, but that’s up from declines of nearly 50% earlier this year.

Murray unveiled polling software that allowed the CEOs to vote on questions, the first of which dealt with hiring. Just 39% said they expect to take on new workers.

When asked what poses the biggest threat to an economic revival, 51% chose excessive debt in both the consumer and government sector. But the plurality were still confident in the U.S. Some 46% of respondents said that if they had a billion dollars to invest, they would put it in the U.S.