Nissan Announces $17.6 Billion EV Investment

Nissan will spend 2 trillion yen over the next 5 years to speed up its roll out of electric vehicles. The Japanese company didn’t quite commit to stopping the manufacture of ICE vehicles completely like other companies have, including Volvo and GM who will produce only electric vehicles by 2030 and 2040 respectively. Nissan will use the investment to launch 15 new electric vehicles by 2030 and 7 additional hybrid vehicles. By 2026, the company hopes that 75% of its European sales, 55% of its Japanese sales, and 40% of its Chinese sales will be electric. However, its aim for the US market is less ambitious, with it only expecting 40% of its US sales to be electric by 2030.

At the same launch, Nissan also laid out its plans for its batteries. The company will focus on a strategy it names “all-solid-state batteries (ASSB) that it hopes to roll out by 2028. As part of that plan, Nissan will open a pilot plant in Yokohama by 2024. If it can get solid-state batteries operating to their full potential, they will charge faster, have higher energy density and provide a longer lifespan that batteries that use liquid electrolytes. These three metrics will be key to faster adoption of electric vehicles. Nissan claims that its solid-state batteries will also be cheaper than traditional batteries, and it hopes to reduce the cost of battery packs down to $75 per kWh by 2028, and then to $65 per kWh after that, which will see the price of electric vehicles reach parity with ICE vehicles. Nissan will look to form a battery supply system to increase its global battery production capacity to 52 GWh by 2026, and 130 GWh by 2030.

While Nissan’s plans for electric vehicles may be quite conservative compared to some other manufacturers, its plans to become completely dependent on solid-state batteries are very ambitious. If it can pull it off, then it should have some real competitive advantages in the market, including increased range, faster charging and lower cost. However, it will have a lot of work to do in a relatively short amount of time to get into volume production with a product that is not guaranteed to work. In a press release in July this year, the company says that there are still breakthroughs required to make the batteries work. Nissan researcher Hiroki Kawakami expanded, "One of the most difficult aspects of developing all-solid-state batteries is the contact between active material particles – which store lithium-ion in the electrodes – and the electrolyte particles – through which the lithium-ion passes. For better contact, we need a machine that applies high pressure from the outside. The key is to ensure sufficient contact, even at low pressure, between the active material of the electrodes and the electrolyte"