Nissan invests more than £420m in Sunderland plant
Nissan set to manufacture all-electric car in UK
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Around 2,250 jobs are likely to be maintained in the north east of England following an announcement from Nissan that it is to manufacture the all-electric Nissan LEAF at its Sunderland plant.
The company also said that construction of its advanced lithium-ion battery plant, which was announced last year, will begin this April. The facility, which will be located at Sunderland, will have a production capacity of 60,000 units a year and will start manufacturing batteries in 2012 for Nissan and its Alliance partner Renault.
The production of Nissan LEAF and the batteries represents a total investment of more than £420m in the Sunderland plant.
The investment will be supported by a £20.7m Grant for Business Investment (GBI) from the UK government and a proposed finance package from the European Investment Bank of up to €220m (£197.3m).
Work to integrate Nissan LEAF into Sunderland’s manufacturing process will begin in 2012. The car will be launched on the plant’s ’Number 2’ production line alongside the Juke compact crossover car, which enters production in August 2010.
The UK’s business secretary Lord Mandelson said: ‘The automotive sector is of key importance to the UK. It supports R&D, technological innovation, skills and a supply chain that’s a mainstay of the wider manufacturing sector.
‘Today’s news from Nissan, with support from government, shows that by working together we can achieve our aim of making the UK a world leader in ultra-low carbon vehicles.’
Andy Palmer, senior vice-president at Nissan, said: ‘Thanks to the UK’s firm commitment to a low-carbon future in terms of infrastructure, customer incentives and educational programmes, Nissan LEAF will be built at Sunderland, making the UK the third country in the world to produce this revolutionary car.’
Production of Nissan LEAF will begin in Oppama, Japan, later this year followed by Smyrna, Tennessee, US, in 2012. Sunderland will come on line in early 2013 with an initial annual production capacity of about 50,000 units.
The three production sites will support the sales launch of the model, which begins in late 2010 in Japan, the US and selected European markets, ahead of global mass marketing from 2012.
Nissan LEAF at a glance:
World’s first affordable, mass-produced zero-emission car
Five-seater C-segment hatchback
Powered by an 80kW electric motor
Charges to 80 per cent of capacity in less than 30 minutes (rapid charging)
Real-world range: 160km (100 miles - US-LA 4 mode)
Top speed of more than 140kph (90mph)
Produced on all-new dedicated EV platform
Source: Nissan
Readers' comments (9)
Anonymous | 19 Mar 2010 1:26 pm
Although as an engineer I find the concept interesting, the description that is has zero emissions is very confusing to the gereal public who might mistakenly think it less polluting than a conventional car. I have not seen any calculations but my guess is that it will be more polluting, given the inefficiencies of electrical generation and distribution, the materials and manufacturing processes for the batteries (which will probably have a far shorter life than a combustion engine) and the fact that it may not be on the road as long (because technological advances may render it obsolete).
It would be helpful to see a proper evaluation of the pros and cons.
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Michael Melnyk Jr | 19 Mar 2010 2:45 pm
While relying on the "electrical grid" I agree that there is little benefit running electric cars but with solar cells approaching $1/watt soon it may be practical to have a solar charging station at home and a vehicle that runs on "sunlight" most of the time.
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Jan Luthman | 19 Mar 2010 2:55 pm
Conventional automobile - single conversion of hydrocarbon fuel latent energy to rotational power.
Electric automobile. Multiple conversions, with energy loss at every stage. From hydrocarbon fuel energy to rotational power, from rotational power to a/c electric power, from a/c to d/c, from d/c electric power to stored chemical energy, from chemical energy to rotational power etc. Plus, of course, losses during step up, transmission, and step down.
Never mind the obvious lack of consumer appeal: a car that requires half an hour to be partially 'recharged', that requires specialist recharging stations (do you know of any homes with an 80kw outlet???), inevitability of stranded cars and owners and passengers due to lack of recharging points and very limited range .
However, the real killer, that NO-ONE has yet remarked on, is that the reason why one electrical horsepower costs less than one petrol horsepower is that the price of petrol includes fuel duty - and there isn't (YET!) any fuel duty on domestic electricity. Fuel duty revenue amounts to some £25bn per year - does anyone (apart, perhaps, from Pollyanna) believe that any UK government, of any hue, would forego £25bn in revenues??
The alleged benefits of electric cars, given current (excuse the pun) technology, are an environmental, economic and social nonsense.
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Kwik Kawarider | 19 Mar 2010 4:04 pm
Most people looking at the performance figures (without interpolation) are going to think "I could live with that" From then on, where the initial energy which is used to get to the point where it is stored in the battery, becomes irelevent (to them) they get a gold goody badge from the tree huggers that do not fully understand the concept of energy change, not creation. The root source of power (for the most part) will still be fossil fuels. Where are drivers to get an 80kw power source to charge the on board battery? I concur, there will be electric cars being towed around the country lanes back to re-charge stations or home every day and what powers the breakdown recovery vehicle? That's us back to the fuels that the govenment tax at 80%. Installation of high output sockets on houshold consumer units will be next (at a subsidised rate) which will include a monitor on which the government will tax the user accordingly, pay as you drive motoring, because VED on electric cars will be zero initially, but will go on as joe public takes up the "green" option.
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Kwik Kawarider | 19 Mar 2010 4:10 pm
Michael Melnyk Jr | 19 Mar 2010 2:45 pm wrote:-
While relying on the "electrical grid" I agree that there is little benefit running electric cars but with solar cells approaching $1/watt soon it may be practical to have a solar charging station at home and a vehicle that runs on "sunlight" most of the time.
80 Kw in 30 minutes is 160 Kwhrs thats a lot of $/watt?? 160 units is a lot of energy in anyone's money. And I would have to charge it at work to get home, now there's an idea, my boss can pay for the electricity for me to get home.
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Dave Horrigan | 23 Mar 2010 5:03 pm
Some very basic physics would tell you that 80 kW for 30 minutes is 40 kWh.
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Kenneth Acason | 25 Mar 2010 2:18 am
Just a moment, 80kW motors are not related to charging.
If we estimate (since the article does not state) that a range of 160km could be accomplished in 2 hrs, @80kph and we stab at 20kW being required to move the vehicle at this speed, then the total capacity required for this 'range' is approximately 40kWh.
The battery can be charged to 80% in 30 minutes. 'Our' battery capacity estimate of 40kWh would correlate to 32kWh of charge in 30 minutes.
A 240VAC domestic supply would therefore need to provide a 266A outlet for this to be achieved.
The battery may last a few cycles at this rate!
This is a significant change to the 2 or 3 minute fill and pay cycle that we are accustomed to, which could take us three times the distance.
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randydutton | 20 Apr 2010 6:25 pm
Where are you going to get the rare earth elements required to make the electric cars? www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/global/01minerals.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1.
Are you creating another dependency on China?
And I suggest you read Top 20 quotes from Toyota and Honda executives criticizing plug-in battery cars www.h2carblog.com/?p=577
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Nigel Clegg | 9 Jun 2010 2:36 pm
Contrary to public misconception, electric cars are not pollution free: They just create pollution 'somewhere else', like electric trains and electric everything else.
Indeed, when losses inherent in electricity generation and distribution are calculated, it soon becomes clear that an electric car or train actually uses far more energy, and produces far more pollution than a similar vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine.
Furthermore, if drivers are led to believe they are not polluting, they will not try to curb their car usage.
I personally believe that pollution has become too clean, so the general public is no longer aware that they are polluting. This was not the case when coal was our main source of energy!
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