THE European Investment bank is providing £188m of funding to support production of the Nissan Leaf electric car in Sunderland.
The deal was signed at the Wearside plant by Trevor Mann, Nissan Europe senior vice president for manufacturing, and Simon Brooks, European Investment Bank vice president for the United Kingdom.
The money will support the integration of new machinery and tooling for production of the 100% electric Leaf, which is the current European Car of the Year.
It will go into production in Sunderland in 2013 with an initial production capacity of around 50,000 vehicles a year.
The funding also helps construction of the company’s new European Mother Plant for the production of lithium-ion electric vehicle battery cells at Sunderland Plant.
Together the battery and Leaf projects represent a £420m investment by Nissan, and are expected to maintain about 2,250 jobs at Nissan and across the UK supply chain.
The investment is also supported by a £20.7m Grant for Business Investment from the UK Government.
Mr Brooks said: “New Nissan investment to produce the Leaf model demonstrates the commercial emergence of electric vehicles from research intensive concept cars. The European Investment Bank is committed to supporting competitive electric vehicle and battery technology.”
Mr Mann added: “The Nissan Leaf has already made history as the world’s first affordable, mass-market, pure-electric vehicle and we are all very excited about battery and Leaf production beginning at Sunderland for our European market. We are extremely grateful for this support.”
