Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd is dismissing speculation that it intends to scale back electric car battery production at its US plant in Tennessee.
Nissan’s ambitious electric vehicle program has been a signature initiative of chief executive at both Renault and Nissan, Carlos Ghosn.
“The Renault-Nissan Alliance remains 100 percent committed to its industry-leading EV program,” spokesman Travis Parman said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
“This global commitment continues for the foreseeable future, and we have not taken any decision whatsoever to modify battery sourcing allocation,” he said.
Parman said Nissan has no plans to “impair” its battery investments in the US or Britain.
His comments came after media reports suggested that the Renault-Nissan alliance was re-evaluating its battery strategy.
The proposal under consideration includes curtailing production at Nissan-operated battery plants in England and the US in order to instead purchase electric vehicle batteries from the South Korean company LG Chem Ltd.
The speculation about Nissan’s cutbacks circulated as Tesla Motors Inc, the electric vehicle maker based in Palo Alto, outside San Francisco, joins with Panasonic Corp to build a new US$5 billion battery factory in Nevada, due to build 500,000 batteries a year by 2020.
Tesla currently sells about 1,500 vehicles per month, but has new smaller, less expensive models on the drawing board, according to the company’s billionaire founder Elon Musk.
Parman noted the Nissan Leaf is the best-selling electric vehicle in the US, having set records for 18 consecutive months.
Leaf sales are up 34 percent through last month. In addition, electric-powered Leaf sales have topped 3,000 units in three of the last four months, Parman said.
Nissan is promoting the Leaf through a “No Charge to Charge” incentive offering two years of no-cost charging to new Leaf buyers, in 11 key markets around the US such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
The company has helped install more than 650 quick chargers in markets across the US, and Nissan is working with partners on 500 additional chargers over the next year, Parman said.
Nissan has also announced plans for introducing a battery electric cargo van in the US.
The Nissan battery plant in Smyrna opened in the spring of last year and is the largest lithium-ion automotive battery plant in North America and the only plant controlled by a carmaker.
The heavily automated plant covers 44,100m2 and is capable of making as many as 200,000 batteries annually.
The battery plant sits next to the Nissan assembly plant, which was retooled in 2012 to accommodate Leaf production.
The Leaf is manufactured on the same line as the Altima and Maxima so volume can readily be adjusted among the vehicles to meet demand.
However, electric vehicle sales continue to struggle.
“There are many options for consumers to choose from to power their cars. Electricity and pure battery cars have some advantages, but also major hurdles to win over consumers,” said Art Wheaton, an automotive industry expert at Cornell University.
“It is also very difficult to change the mindset of drivers after more than 115 years of gasoline dominance,” he said.
“Without major technological innovation, new legislation or tax incentives, batteries still fall short,” he said.
In addition, gas prices have decreased or stabilized in many areas.
Even though Tesla’s new factory may help electrical battery development, the technology remains overall “too heavy and too costly, and it relies on Lithium, which is not as readily available as gasoline,” Wheaton said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS