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Nissan's Sunderland plant - one of Europe's most productive car factories - adds Nissan LEAF to its burgeoning portfolio
- New Nissan LEAF built alongside Qashqai in the UK
- Electric Powertrain assembled in ‘clean' facility on line
- €480 million (£420 million) upgrade to NMUK, including new battery plant
While the original Nissan LEAF was built solely in Japan, New LEAF is being built in three locations: Japan, North America and Europe.
Production of New LEAF for Europe started in March at Nissan's record-breaking plant in Sunderland in the UK. It is built on Line 1 alongside the hugely successful Qashqai and Qashqai +2 models. The plant also builds Juke and Note on its Line 2.
The Qashqai is unique in the vehicle market. Unlike most models where sales decrease further into the vehicle's lifecycle, Qashqai has become more popular every year it has been on sale, with 310,929 manufactured last year at Sunderland. With the line working three shifts around the clock, the considerable changes needed to integrate LEAF had to take place at weekends and over holiday periods: stopping the line to make the changes was never an option.
New dies have been created for the Press Shop for to make new body panels and panels for the battery tray. New robots have been installed in the Body Shop to support the build of the body-in-white. New paint facilities have also been installed to handle LEAF's Pearl White option - the colour is also available on the new Juke Nismo.
The specific requirements of LEAF's electric motor, charger and inverter package has meant a clean room has been established in the centre of the plant's original final assembly area, where the power train is assembled in near clinical conditions.
Once completed, the electric powertrain is sealed and then it is ready to power a car for many years to come, with a fraction of the maintenance required by an ICE vehicle. The LEAF drivetrain is inserted into the car in the same manner as conventional engines are placed into Qashqai, by being lifted from underneath by the same equipment used for the combustion engines.
A new ‘battery-stuff' station was established on the line to insert the battery pack under the car. This special machine inserts the pack and simultaneously tightens the bolts to secure it to the vehicle and is situated next to the machine that fits Qashqai fuel tanks. Special facilities have also been created for insertion of the instrument panel into the car, which has to be rotated once through the front door to position it correctly, unlike the Qashqai dashboard.
It's not just the car that's built at Sunderland, but the batteries too. A new facility has been built on the Sunderland site where more than 200 employees will create battery packs for the LEAF and forthcoming e-NV200 electric van, which will be made in Barcelona. The highly sophisticated battery plant is quite unlike any other area of the factory, with workers donning protective fabric suits, anti-static shoes and taking an air shower before starting work in some areas.
There are three elements to battery pack production: cells are built first before being turned into modules - each module holds four cells. The final phase sees 48 modules bought together to make each battery pack. The plant began operations at the start of 2013, just ahead of LEAF production.
Vice President of NMUK, Kevin Fitzpatrick is proud of the changes to the Sunderland plant, commenting: "Manufacturing the LEAF at Sunderland is a huge milestone both for the company as a whole and for the factory. Our engineering staff have worked incredibly hard and have come up with some ingenious solutions to make a combustion engine vehicle line build an EV product while maintaining productivity and our very high quality standards.
"It is a testament to the people we employ here that we were able to do that difficult task without impacting the volume for our best-selling Qashqai model, which is the most popular vehicle in our European range. Constructing the battery plant was a big investment and demonstrates Nissan's commitment to electric vehicles for many years to come."
The Sunderland plant built its first car, a white Nissan Bluebird, in 1986. Total production since then has topped 7 million units with 80 per cent of production exported to 97 countries. The plant currently employs 6,100 people. Further new models include the new Nissan Note and the next generation Nissan Qashqai, and from 2015, the plant will also build a forthcoming compact Infiniti model.
