Nissan To Build Two New EV Models In Mississippi - Production Will Begin In 2025

Nissan Motor Co. will build two battery-electric vehicles for the US market at a plant in Mississippi, marking the Japanese automaker's most significant foray into the rapidly burgeoning sector of consumer EVs in North America to date.

The plug-in battery-powered cars, one for Nissan and one for Infiniti, will begin production in 2025, according to the Yokohama, Japan-based automaker. Nissan wants to spend $500 million at its Canton facility, which is located just north of the state capital of Jackson, on technology for electric vehicle manufacturing lines.

Nissan's investment in the Mississippi facility is part of a $18 billion plan to invest in electrification by 2030, which will be funded in part by reallocating funds from combustion engine development.

“It’s a combination of additional investment but most important, reallocation of resources from internal combustion engines towards electric,” Nissan Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta said an interview Thursday with Bloomberg Television. “We have enough net cash to move forward with these investments.”

According to Gupta, the $500 million is the first of numerous major investments Nissan plans for the United States. Once the technology is commercially viable, Gupta said, the automaker aims to produce battery packs near the Canton factory and to localise solid-state battery production in the United States.

With U.S. heritage manufacturers Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co., as well as global heavyweights like Volkswagen AG and Toyota Motor Corp., pledging billions of dollars to catch market incumbent Tesla Inc., competition in the EV market is heating up. Along with increased factory capacity and new models, there is a race to secure battery-cell supply and meet varied deadlines in order to meet global emissions and clean-energy goals.

Nissan was a pioneer in the electrification movement, launching the Nissan Leaf in 2010 as the world's first mass-produced battery-electric vehicle. While the plug-in is a global best-seller, it has been outsold and overtaken in recent years by Tesla automobiles, which did not begin mass-production until 2017.

It has also been reported that Leaf sales in the United States increased by 48.9% to 14,239 units in 2021. Tesla delivered nearly 940,000 electric vehicles to consumers worldwide, despite the fact that it does not break down sales by area. The EV represents a minor portion of Nissan's U.S. business: the automaker sold over 1 million vehicles in the United States last year, up 8.7% from 2020.