Barcelona, in Spain, is a city that seems to have it all: from beautiful architecture to the world’s best football team. And now it can add yet more electric vehicle production to that list.
That’s because Barcelona has been chosen by Nissan to assemble the gearbox for both the Nissan LEAF and the Nissan eNV200 (pictured) with an investment of €6million. However, that only tells part of the story: because Barcelona will also be the manufacturing sight for a new, yet to be revealed, passenger car, with production of 80,000 units a year at an investment of €110million; and an increase in annual capacity for its 1-Ton Pickup: at an investment of €14million.
Overall, the investments total €130million and will create thousands of new jobs, with production of the new passenger car to begin in 2014. The money will be poured into updating the production lines as well as introducing the technology needed to support electric vehicle production.
It’s not the only time that Nissan has recently made a huge investment in Barcelona: it had already announced that it would spend €200million bringing production of the Nissan e-NV200, its second electric vehicle, to the city; as well as the production of a new truck at its Avila plant.
According to Frank Torres, the managing director of Nissan Motor Iberica, this investment could lead to even more production opportunities in the future.
“In the coming years, Barcelona plant will work at full capacity, with an annual output over 200,000 units while maintaining its attractiveness to produce new models,” he said.
“Given the current crisis environment, this is not only a great achievement for Nissan, but for the entire industry in this country.”
Now Barcelona can arguably be considered the most versatile of all of Nissan’s plants as it can produce LCVs; electric vehicles and passenger cars.
Paul is a freelance writer with a background in everything from motoring to finance; and holidays to women's undergarments he just writes about them, honestly! He has now sadly crept into his early 30s and seems to have forgotten everything learned at school Still, he's a green car fanatic and isn't that what counts?
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