LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese carmaker Nissan Motor said on Friday it would invest 1.12 billion pounds (1.28 billion euros) to make electric versions of two of its best-selling SUVs. Juke and Qashqai, at its British factory in Sunderland.
The project will require up to 2 billion pounds of investment in a third battery factory in Britain and infrastructure projects, Nissan added without providing details.
The names and launch schedule of these new electric models will be revealed later.
“We are accelerating into a new era for Nissan,” Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said in a statement.
Japan’s third-largest carmaker will continue to manufacture its Leaf electric car in Sunderland.
The Japanese group announced in 2021 an investment of $1.4 billion to build a 9 gigawatt-hour (GWh) battery factory in Sunderland with its Chinese partner Envision AESC. It also has a small battery factory for the Leaf.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Nissan’s decision was a “massive vote of confidence in the British car industry”.
Nissan plans to only build electric vehicles for the European market by 2030.
The Japanese manufacturer’s announcement comes a few months after the decision by Indian Tata Motors to invest 4 billion pounds in a battery factory to supply its assembly plants of its Jaguar Land Rover subsidiary.
(Kylie MacLellan, Nick Carey and Daniel Leussink; Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the , edited by Gilles Guillaume)
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