Nissan Plans $1 Billion Electric Car Plant in U.S.

Quoted from Bloomberg.com:

By Yuki Hagiwara and Alan Ohnsman

June 20 (Bloomberg) -- Nissan Motor Co. and NEC Corp. may invest as much as $1 billion in a U.S. electric car plant, to tap government loans for environmentally friendly vehicles, Nikkei English News reported.

The Japanese automaker will tie up with NEC to produce lithium-ion batteries at the factory in Smyrna, Tennessee, Nikkei said, without giving any source for the information. Annual production capacity at the site may reach as many as 100,000 vehicles by 2012, the report said.

Nissan has applied for a loan under the U.S. government program to support fuel-efficient cars, said Fred Standish, a spokesman at the automaker’s U.S. headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee. He declined to comment further on the Nikkei report. Sadayuki Hamaguchi, a spokesman at Nissan’s Tokyo headquarters, declined to comment on the report.