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Nissan's Sunderland factory is to be awarded a £380 million grant to build a new generation of electric cars, according to reports.

The grant was given to Nissan by the European Investment Bank in April, and the company has now decided to invest the bulk of it in the UK.

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Nissan plans to turn its Sunderland factory into Europe's biggest electric car plant, securing 4500 jobs and thos...Read the full article

 Noddy was said to be delighted that Big Ears would not have to flap his lugs any more to help the car maintain a decent speed.

 

Autocar:

Nissan's Sunderland factory is to be awarded a £380 million grant to build a new generation of electric cars, according to reports.

The grant was given to Nissan by the European Investment Bank in April, and the company has now decided to invest the bulk of it in the UK.

more spinning by Autocar?

the original grant from the EIB and its terms is here:

http://www.eib.org/projects/pipeline/2009/20090140.htm?lang=-en

unless the EIB has been hoodwinked there seems in the statement of who the beneficiaries of the grant are and the objectives of the project a great deal of emphasis on Nissan Motor Iberica. Would Autocar/Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK care to explain?

Hi....i could be wrong, but to me it reads as three parts:

1) R&D across UK and Spain

2) actual manufacturing in UK and Spain

3) investment in the Spanish facilities to make them greener....(not especially to manufacture the car)......

The autocar clip gives reference to the UK getting the majority of the grant and thus I guess we are getting more of the R&D and more of the manufacturing whereas the Spanish plant are getting more green aspects.

Could be very wrong......I think though more detail will come out in due course so we will get to know much more then....it will become clearer!! but in any case...the UK gets more investment!!!!.......that has to be good news!!!!!......well done mandy!

What's interesting about these cars is that by the time they finally get them to market, the stupid notion that carbon dioxide has warmed the Earth will have been blown away. Two or three more years of dipping temperatures is going to knock a big hole in the appeal of battery cars. They will be expensive, and certainly more expensive than fossil-fuelled cars, and even eco-nuts will by then realise they've been had, so who will buy them? The knobs who think that cars are ruining the planet will have to find another reason to cry over nature. And are we going to have a betamax versus VHS game again, where some will be hydrogen, and some will be plug-in mains powered batteries? I'm not sure I trust Nissan to come up with anything appealing either. That CubeCar is for those with no style.