Nissan Motor to Increase Production of Lithium-Ion Battery for its EV

Copyright Nissan Motor Co.

Japan's Nissan Motor Co. announced on June 11, 2010, that it will increase its domestic production capacity of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) to 90,000 units per year by 2011.

The Nissan LEAF, Nissan's electric vehicle, is equipped with a laminated lithium-ion battery produced by Automotive Energy Supply Corp. (AESC), a company jointly established by Nissan and NEC Corp., a leading Japanese electronics company. AESC had originally planned to start mass production of the lithium-ion batteries in the latter half of 2010 with a production scale responding to 54,000 EVs per year by FY 2011.

However, the domestic orders Nissan started to accept for the EV in April 2010 unexpectedly reached 6,000, the entire sales target for FY 2010, in only two months. Based on the expected future demand, Nissan decided to increase lithium-ion battery production to 90,000 units per year, in order to match the annual production of 90,000 EVs, adding 36,000 EVs to the initially planned scale.

The Nissan LEAF will be released in Japan, the U.S., Portugal, and Holland in December 2010, in the U.K. and Ireland in February 2011, and globally in 2012.

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http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/NEWS/
2010/_STORY/100611-01-e.html