Nissan Picks Tenn. Plant for Hybrid vehicles

[DallasTitan]

I wonder if MS plant is next for hybrid Titans.


Nissan Picks Tenn. Plant for Hybrid


Nissan Motor Co. announced Friday it has picked its assembly plant in Tennessee for production of its first more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle.

The company is entering the hybrid market behind some of its competitors but still expects to sell as many as 50,000 gas-electric Altimas for the 2007 model year — a fraction of the nearly 1 million vehicles sold by Nissan North America, officials said.

"A lot of it will depend on how sales support it," said Dan Gaudette, Nissan's senior vice president of North American manufacturing and quality assurance.

Gaudette joined Gov. Phil Bredesen at a trade seminar of parts suppliers to announce that production will start in late 2006 for 2007 model year cars.

Nissan will invest $10.4 million for additional equipment and minor modifications to existing assembly lines at the plant in Smyrna, a Nashville suburb.

The company said it's not yet certain how much gas mileage improvement the new hybrid will have over the standard Altima's 31 mpg on the highway and 24 mpg in the city. Hybrid cars get better mileage because they switch between a gasoline engine and an electric motor.

Nissan will license technology from Toyota Motor Corp. instead of developing its own hybrid parts.

Jed Connelly, vice president of sales and marketing for Nissan, said the hybrid line is important despite projections for limited production initially.

"It's a marketing challenge actually because of the fact that it still is an Altima. It is just a technology put in the Altima," Connelly said.

Patrick Hong, senior technical editor at Road & Track Magazine, said manufacturers are tentatively stepping into a hybrid market dominated by Toyota.

"I think the stakes are fairly high in terms of image and sales," he said. "Toyota has the image of being clean because they have the hybrids."

Gaudette said Nissan is eyeing the future with the hybrid offering, looking at the potential to offer other options such as cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells.

"This is just one segment of the process for efficiency, and for environmental concerns as well," he said.

By the end of this year, J. D. Power and Associates predicts a total of 222,000 hybrid vehicles, 1.3 percent of all vehicles, will be sold in the U.S., and most of those will be Toyotas.

Since hybrids usually cost more than regular gas engines, J.D. Power expects the hybrid share of the car market to peak at about 3.5 percent of all sales by 2012.

J.D. Power analyst Anthony Pratt said he doesn't think Nissan will be able to sell 50,000 hybrids right away because it is being rolled into the Altima line rather being offered as a unique model.

"By using Toyota's technology in the short term, it allows Nissan to get into the market quickly without so much of the risk," Pratt said.

Toyota, Honda Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co. already offer hybrids and many more are getting ready for market. European manufacturers have been betting on cleaner-burning diesel technology.

"Nissan, I wouldn't say they're falling behind, I would say they are in the middle," said Hong. "At least they are making an effort."

Nissan's plant in Smyrna was built in 1980 as the company's first production facility outside Japan. It already is manufacturing traditional gas-engine Altima and Maxima cars, Xterra and Pathfinder sports utility vehicles and Frontier pickups.

About 6,700 existing employees in Smyrna and 1,300 in an engine assembly plant at Decherd plus 2,800 supplier contractors will be trained to build the new line.

Nissan North America reported a sales increase across all of its brands of 23.7 percent last year, to a total of 985,988 units.

By MATT GOURAS, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jun 18, 4:39 AM ET

[stlblues]

It would be nice, I found one problem with the article, Honda is the cleanest car company and was the first with a hybrid on the market, not Toyota.