Nissan to build e-car batteries in Blighty
Coup for Sunderland plant
Leccy Tech Nissan is to start making lithium-ion batteries for its leccy cars in the UK. But today's announcement stopped short of guaranteeing that Nissan will start building e-cars here too.
In a statement, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “Nissan's investment in a new battery plant and its hope to start producing electric vehicles here in Sunderland is great news for the local economy... Sunderland could now be a strong contender to produce electric vehicles for Nissan in Europe.”
Presumably, what Nissan actually hopes for is to get more cash from the Government. Nissan's investment in the Sunderland battery plant will amount to £200m ($327m/€232m) over five years and will create 350 direct jobs.
Nissan also announced that a second battery plant will be built in Portugal. Both locations have been chosen as the result of financial assistance in the form of grants and loan guarantees from their respective governments.
Nissan's Sunderland plant falls within the recently established north-east of England Low Carbon Economic Area. The establishment of the LCEA will involve the setting up of a new training centre, technology park and test track for low carbon vehicle development.
Will Nissan's EV meets customers' expectations/?
Portugal has its own e-car ambitions, while Nissan has two factories across the border in Spain at Barcelona and Ávila.
In November 2008, Portugal signed a deal with the Renault-Nissan Alliance to begin implementing what it calls a “zero-emission mobility programme” from 2010, with the first e-cars arriving in 2011. The Portuguese government will install 1200 recharging stations in 25 major towns and cities, and along the country's motorway network.
Between them, the two factories will have the capacity to churn out 60,000 battery packs a year, which gives some idea of Nissan's medium-term e-car sales ambitions. Nissan also indicated that other European battery plants may be on the cards.
Judging by its title – the Nissan European Mother Site for Battery Production – the Sunderland plant will be the hub of Nissan's European battery operations, so assuming Mandelson and Nissan can hammer out the financials, leccy car production may indeed come to Sunderland at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Nissan is expected to unveil a new electric car on 2 August in Japan. ®
COMMENTS
awesome, now lets have them in the uk.
This is exactly the sort of news story that should be happening here in the U.S. The big three need to get the ball rolling on electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are safe, efficient, and clean. With a little more research, and a lot more commitment from the large automakers, electric cars become a very viable solution to reduce our oil consumptions, green house gas emissions, health care costs, and at the same time adding jobs and bolstering the economy. For more information about electric cars, their history (they’ve been around a long time, ask owners of the GM EV1 or RAV4-EV), and their advantages, check out the book “Two Cents Per Mile” by Nevres Cefo. The website for the book can be found at http://www.twocentspermile.com and you can read excerpts of it on Amazon at http://bit.ly/2centspermile
Return to sender
Now I am not sure of this but I guess EU law (which of course never appears on any manifesto I vote for) will prescribe the polluting waste i.e. dead batteries, is returned to the source.
Will this turn the north east, an area of staggering contrasts of beauty and industry into a reprocessing zone?
We'll leave the bad science and regressive products aside.
My home town
I know a few people who work at the NIssan plant.
When it first opened they were ex shipbuilders or worked at some of the new dean engineering works that Maggie shut down (well before they china took the jobs). These folks were told to come in at 7;30am and were asked to go though a introduction course which included bowing to managers and each other, and morning exercises before work.
FWICR they still run morning exercise classes before early shift starts and people still turn up early to take them - people like the idea.
They also *like* thier management - who when told of a problem apologise and fix it - no excuses, blame games or backstabbing.
If the .gov.uk is going to give money to Uk based car plants then Nissan and Honda are the companies who threat thier staff well and run a modern effecient happy facility - they should get the moolah rather than waste it on dead behemoths such as LDV.
Jacqui
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud based data management
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
What you need to know about cloud backup
