AD&P; > June 2013 > FEATURE > Nissan Is Building EV Batteries—and EVs—in Smyrna > Gary S. Vasilash > gsv@autofeldguide.com
While everything from bankruptcies
to lack of capacity utilization seems
to characterize the state of companies
producing batteries for electric vehicles
(EVs), here's Jef Deaton walking through
a 475,000-sq. ft. plant in Smyrna,
TN, a stone's throw away from the
5.9-million-sq. ft. plant where Nissan
produces the Altima, Maxima, Pathfnder,
Infniti JX35, and . . . the Nissan LEAF.
An electric vehicle. Deaton is the plant
manager of the Nissan Battery Plant, the
largest lithium-ion battery (Li-ion) plant
in the United States, one of three plants
that Nissan has established (the other two
are in England and Japan), a plant that
is capable of producing up to 200,000
batteries per year. And they are building
batteries in Smyrna.
Given that sales of the LEAF (which,
incidentally, is produced on the same
production line at the assembly
plant with the Altima and Maxima, a
testament to Nissan's manufacturing
fexibility) are nowhere near the 200,000
per year mark (in 2012, 9,819 LEAFs
were sold in the U.S.), the company
is confdent in the technology, which
explains the construction of the battery
plant in Tennessee. What's more, Nissan
t A stack of lithium-ion battery cells
produced at the Nissan battery plant in
Smyrna, TN, for the LEAF. Each cell has a
capacity of 33 ampere hours.
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