Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. will start making drive motors for its all-electric Leaf hatchback at its Decherd, TN, engine plant in early 2013, not long after the automaker begins assembling the North American version of the EV and its lithium-ion battery packs at the sprawling Nissan manufacturing campus in Smyrna, about 75 miles away. The automaker's 1.2-million-
square-foot Decherd plant, which makes engines and components for U.S.-built conventionally-powered Nissans, will be able to produce as many as 150,000 Leaf motors a year from the 100,000 square-foot area dedicated to production (left) of the electric motors. The new assembly line, which will build motors for the cars rolling off the Leaf assembly line at Smyrna, will swell the 750-person ranks at Decherd by about 90 jobs, the company said.
Nissan also said construction of the Leaf assembly and battery production facilities at the 3,350-employee Smyrna campus is back on track for late 2012 production. Hideaki Watanabe, corporate vice president for Nissan’s Global Zero-Emission Vehicle Business Unit, said last month that EV production at Smyrna could be delayed past the $1.6-million facility’s planned December, 2012 launch date because of disruptions arising from the earthquake that devastated Japan earlier this year. But in a recent interview in the trade journal Automotive News, Nissan Americas vice chairman and manufacturing and supply chain chief Bill Krueger said that despite a long delay in training plant personnel who'd been sent to Japan – the only active Leaf plant, near Yokohama, was shuttered for a month to assess and repair quake damage – the U.S. team is "still targeting to launch on time, we have just shy of a year-and-a-half to make up for the lost time."
Commenting this week on the decision to build Leaf motors in Tennessee, Krueger said the Decherd plant would “play a vital role in making zero-emission mobility a reality for American consumers.” Nissan last month had by far its best-ever sales month for the Leaf, selling 1,708 of the EVs, up 50 percent from May. The all-electric hatchback – which currently is being sold only in a seven “early adopter” states – trailed only the Toyota Prius hybrid-electric vehicle among advanced-powertrain vehicles sold in the U.S. in June. Nissan is opening sales in nine more states next week and will add a dozen more by year's end. The company intends to be selling the Leaf in all 50 states by 2013.
