Engineering news
Nissan is to invest £26.5 million at its Sunderland battery plant as it commits to producing future generation of electric vehicle (EV) batteries at the flagship manufacturing base.
The project will safeguard 300 highly-skilled jobs in manufacturing, maintenance and engineering at the advanced lithium-ion plant, the largest of its type in Europe.
Paul Willcox, chairman of Nissan Europe, said: “I congratulate all my colleagues in the UK on securing this future technology, which is just reward for the second-to-none quality levels they have achieved since launching battery manufacturing in Sunderland, which remains the biggest UK car plant of all time.”
The car manufacturer will also team with with academic and technology partners in the UK as part of a £19.4 million project, which is supported with a £9.7 million grant from the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC).
The other consortium members are Hyperdrive Innovation, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Newcastle University and Zero Carbon Futures, who will work together on key areas of battery development covering pilot projects, product diversification and process improvement.
WMG's role in the project will be to investigate potential improvements to battery chemistry and increasing manufacturing yield, and to optimise automated manufacturing processes to enable Nissan to remain at the forefront of EV technology.
Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, chairman at WMG, said: “We are delighted to be part of this project which clearly shows the UK as the go-to location for European battery manufacture and research. This is the ideal partnership to reinforce that position.”
Nissan’s UK battery plant is one of three Nissan battery production sites globally, also providing battery modules for Nissan’s all-electric van, the e-NV200, which is manufactured in the company’s plant in Barcelona, Spain.