Nissan Electric Vehicles To Be Made In U.S.
Following the approval of a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, Nissan has announced that they will be drastically expanding the operations of their Smyrna, Tennessee. The $1.6 billion loan will be used to bring the factory into the 21st century by making it capable of constructing battery electric vehicles and individual battery packs for other vehicles.
Currently, Nissan’s Smyrna operations are responsible for creating the Altima, the Maxima, the Xterra, the Frontier, and the Pathfinder. In order to make room for the battery electric vehicle construction, it is likely that the production of the Xterra, Frontier, and Pathfinder will be moved to another location. Production goals for the facility will be 150,000 electric vehicles and 200,000 lithium ion battery packs. The extra batteries will be sold to other vehicle manufacturers.
The pictured Nissan EV test vehicle is built off of a Cube platform, but this will not be the final form of the EV. It will end up as a five-seat vehicle that will go into test production in Japan next year. Once the kinks are ironed out of the vehicle’s test lease phase, full-scale production of the yet to be named Nissan EV will begin at the Smyrna location in 2012. The EV is expected to have a 100 mile all electric range.
