To produce at mass the lithium ion batteries for electric and plug-in vehicles, Nissan Motor Co. and NEC Corp. have joined. They will invest $115 million in a factory that will create 65,000 batteries a year by 2011. It is truly concrete evidence that Nissan is serious about its promise of bringing electric vehicles to America in 2010. Also, Nissan is fervent to lead the emerging market for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Nissan also wants to rule in the so-called “next generation” green cars. One proof of growing market of green vehicles is the sales of Toyota Prius that reached more than million. Recently, Honda had announced that they will put up a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle on the road.
However, Nissan believes that they have advantage when it comes to electric vehicles. The Nissan-NEC partnership called as Automotive Energy Supply Corp. is providing the batteries that Renault will use in the electric cars it is putting up for Israel and Denmark, wherein the governments supported Silicon Valley startup Project Better Place with its arrangement to offer reasonably priced EVs to the masses. The same arrangement with the government of Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture is what Nissan is wants.
Both Nissan and NEC are so positive in its planned technology to market its batteries to several automakers and suppliers. The shared project stated that the batteries can distribute twice the power of the nickel-metal hydride batteries which is used in the Prius. Further, the lithium-ion batteries have been certified to be safe and showing high- performance qualities on normal runs of more than 100,000 kilometers or 60,000 miles.
The factory of Automotive Energy Supply will be build at the Zama Operations Facility of Nissan in Kanagawa. They say that 13,000 batteries will be released next year and by the year 2011, production will reach 65,000. Over the next three years, Nissan and NEC will invest $115 million and beyond that, NEC will add another $105 million.
