Nissan-Renault To Construct Manufacturing Facility In France
Published:03-November-2009
By Staff Reporter
To produce batteries for electric vehicles
Nissan Motor and its partner Renault intends to jointly construct a plant in France to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles in 2012, reported Reuters, quoting Japan's Nikkei business daily as its source.
Reportedly, the plant is expected to annually produce batteries for around 60,000 cars. As part of a plan to supply Renault with lithium ion batteries for use in electric vehicles, Nissan is expected to invest a total of around JPY50 billion ($550 million) to upgrade supply capacity in Japan and build the plant in France, added the source quoting the paper.
Apart from working for the production of batteries, both the companies intends to work together on motors and other key components of electric vehicles in order to reduce the production costs.
Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Nissan, said that the Franco-Japanese alliance, which has revealed plans to manufacture batteries in Japan, the US, Portugal and Britain, was considering production of batteries for electric vehicles in France.
Reportedly, Mr. Ghosn informed the news agency that last month the alliance was ready to manufacture a half million electric car batteries annually. In the second half of 2010, Nissan plans to sell electric cars in Japan, followed a year later by Renault and then global mass production in 2012.
