Nissan Planning Electric Car Battery Plant in Portugal
Nissan and the Portuguese Government have signed an agreement to study whether or not to invest €300 to €400 million euros in an electric car battery plant in Portugal.
As I’ve reported before, although Nissan was a little late to the electric car party, they have recently been investing heavily in electrification including several major deals with local and state governments around the US and the world to roll out an electric car charging infrastructure.
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Following on the heels of an agreement between Nissan/Renault and the Portuguese Government to build 1,300 charging stations in Portugal by the end of 2011, Carlos Tavares, Nissan’s Executive Vice-President, says “The plant will probably produce around 50,000 batteries per year and may create around 300 jobs.”
Tavares also indicated that Nissan would be looking for other such opportunities to build battery plants in the United States, Europe and China.
Image Credit: Tetsuya Yokoyama
Now lets see if Obama can jumpstart this type of business growth here.
With all the focus and money that Nissan is investing in both OR and TN markets, I’m disappointed that they didn’t look in the USA first for this type of plant.
This looks a good idea to me. I have not heard of many Portuguese car brands or automotive investments in the land, but this looks a good step to me. The infrastructure will definitely be a challenge, and flexible and understanding governments, such as Norway, need to set examples and show to way for countries such as Portugal to be a player in the alternate energy vehicles market.
hey, i actually thought it would be the car, now i see is actually the batteries.
At the moment Portuguese Government is investing a lot in clean energies as you can see in the following link.
http://www.retroconcept.com/Site_Retroconcept.swf
As i saw in a presentation let’s see if we can stop being the “P” of the famous P.I.G.S of Europe.