Nissan Promises To Build Electric Vehicles, Batteries In The US
The next few years could bring a revolution of sorts to the automotive manufacturing industry. Manufacturers of all sizes have promised to begin building pure electric models and/or expand their line up of hybrid vehicles. Within five years time, every manufacturer will likely have some skin in the alternate power game, offering one or more fuel efficient, low or zero emission vehicles for sale.
Battery Manufacturing Overseas Mostly?
One disturbing trend not lost on many Americans is that the manufacturer of these types of vehicles and their all important lithium-ion (li-ion) battery packs will mostly come from overseas locations (good-bye jobs). GM, Ford and others are sourcing batteries from South Korea and Germany while a new US car company, Coda Automotive, plans on importing cars already equipped with li-ion batteries from China.
Japanese automaker Nissan Motors announced recently that they will produce both an electric car and li-ion batteries at its plants in Tennessee thanks to loan interest loans offered by the federal government to encourage the development of “green” or environmentally-friendly vehicles. Nissan plans to invest more than $500 million at its Smyrna facility to build these cars, possibly expanding its investment to one billion dollars or more eventually.
Compact Sedan To Be Built
Nissan says that the Smyrna facility will build between 50-100,000 electric vehicles annually, the first model based on a Sentra sized sedan. A production facility for high-capacity li-ion batteries will be built adjacent to the assembly plant in conjunction with its battery partner NEC Corp.
The automaker applied for funding from the U.S. government under a low-interest-loan program to support the automobile industry and expects to receive a loan totally more than one billion dollars. Similar facilities are expected to spring up in Michigan and elsewhere as US manufacturers look to build their own assembly plants with battery production taking place nearby. However, without federal funding in place most of these facilities would not be built in the first place.
See Also — Nissan EV Road Show Rolls Into Raleigh
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June 26th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Regarding the politics of the DOE ATVM Loan awards:
So it turns out to be all the best loans money can buy.
Ford paid over $14M to elected officials and consultants in order to get the loan. Ford paid the third largest amount and Ford got the third largest loan. This is disclosed in public records searches and lobby filings just revealed. 21 elected officials had direct benefit from the deal.
Nissan paid over $10M to elected officials and consultants in order to get the loan. Nissan paid the third largest amount and Nissan got the third largest loan. This is disclosed in public records searches and lobby filings just revealed. The law and public statements by elected officials state that the money was to increase American competitiveness for America car companies yet the money was given to a Japanese company who will send all of the profits back to Japan. 7 elected officials had direct benefit from the deal.
Tesla paid over $100,000.00 to elected officials and consultants in order to get the loan. Tesla paid the third largest amount and Tesla got the third largest loan. This is disclosed in public records searches and lobby filings just revealed. Tesla’s filings show that their business model is unsustainable compared to competitors, that they were 200% off on the BOM of their car, that all of their first funding was wasted so they have to pay back twice as much to investors as competing companies and that their technology is so old, it all needs to be redone yet they still got money. 18 elected officials had direct benefit from the deal. Tesla did not even read the rules for the loan and planned to build a building when the NEPA rules make that option impossible so they had to restart the process, which is supposed to put one into a new cycle yet they were kept in the previous cycle and put ahead of Fisker, Bright and others who had applied earlier than Tesla. Tesla provided massively creative accounting record to show that they were financially sustainable and have issued numerous press releases to try to make people think that but, in fact, the truth is that they are not because of bad management issues that they cannot get past.
The ATVM program was created by Ford, GM & Chrysler lobbyists to pad their company’s pockets and those three had pre-hardwired the entire $25B for their own pockets but something happened in the process when Senator Bingaman added a few key lines that opened the door for OTHERS to apply to build green technology and required that those who get the money were “financially sustainable” businesses. Back when the ATVM was authored to save Detroit, it was fully known that Detroit was going to go bankrupt. Ford had the same problems as GM and Chrysler but they went around the world getting bailout money instead of going first to US funds. As law required public exposure of the bankruptcy, Bingaman’s brilliant plan to finally create a green transportation industry was revealed. The very people that had stopped green cars for over 100 years suddenly became the first people to, accidently, cause them to happen but now others could do it too.
Bingaman should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for pulling off this impossible trick and finally giving America the Electric Cars it should have had for the last hundred years.
Once Detroit realized this, they tried to hijack the whole ATVM program with a takeback at the end of 2008 but that effort was defeated by a close late night vote. Now that it was out there, Detroit lobbyists and influencers fought to get the review of applicants delayed for as long as possible because they realized that, in a recession, most of the smaller competing interests could be forced to go out of business if they could just be kept away from the money for long enough. Major American TARP banks have said that the standard commercial loan process that each of these 26 applicants (not hundreds of applicants- There were 26 applicants in the round) should take 4 weeks at the longest and 3 weeks nominally. It seems clear that the loans were delayed due to political agendas and not process issues. It is not that there were no resources for the review as the Section 136 law provided over $10M in staff fees to review 26 people (Banks spend $10,000.00 to review 26 applications)
Bright Automotive had applied on time, ahead of the others, turned in low overhead numbers and a great path too profit but they were virtually ignored while intensive meetings were conducted with Nissan, Ford and Tesla because those parties paid for it. The law says that this, and the purchasing of favors, gave those parties an unfair business advantage using taxpayer dollars, over Bright. A case Bright would easily win if they choose to run with it.
Clearly, it isn’t over yet. Stay tuned for the Senate, Congressional, Ethics Committee and media reviews of this one. Watch for the charts connecting who-to-who. (It is OK to re-post this)
June 28th, 2009 at 11:27 am
With the shutdown and scaling back of so many auto makers it’s good to see new plants opening up. Especially in a niche that will likely keep expanding.
Did I miss something in Johnson Lee’s comment? He listed all three automakers as paying the “third largest amount” and getting the “third largest loan”.
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June 28th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Norcal, I’m not sure what Johnson Lee meant either. His thoughts seem to have gotten lost in the middle of his rant.
June 28th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Good to hear about Nissan and its plans for electric vehicles. Hyundai has also announced it will bring it’s first full electric vehicle to the market in 2012.
Together with Korean companies they will form a consortium for electric vehicle development and develop green electric cars for its home and international markets!
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June 28th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Kia World– By 2012, most of the large players will have pure electric vehicles on the market. Some will have access to this technology thanks to arrangements it has with other manufacturers. Whatever Hyundai does will likely filter down to Kia as both companies make up the Hyundai Kia Automotive Group.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:02 am
Hm… electric cars will not last that long when you’re driving. It needs to recharge…
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