Nissan preps an old engine plant to make solid-state EV batteries

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Nissan Motor Co.'s oldest factory, its storied Yokohama Plant, wasn't just the carmaker's original headquarters.

It also housed Japan's first integrated mass-production line for automobiles, and today it still makes one of the world's most sophisticated internal combustion engines, a powerful variable combustion ratio turbocharged unit.

But in a symbolic shift for the nation's auto industry, Nissan's sprawling Yokohama complex next year will begin pilot production of advanced solid-state batteries, the holy grail of next-generation electric vehicles.

The breakthrough-battery pilot comes on top of the factory's ramp-up of electric motor output in recent years and is a potent symbol of Japan's transition from internal combustion to the modern age of electrification. Automakers from Toyota Motor Corp. to Honda Motor Co. are reconfiguring their domestic operations to meet demand for electrification while trying to avoid job cuts.

As Yokohama on Wednesday commemorated building its 40 millionth engine, in June, the wider shift to electrification loomed large.

Globally, Nissan expects to get 44 percent of its sales from EVs or e-Power hybrid vehicles by its 2026 fiscal year. In Europe, Nissan targets an even faster tilt: 98 percent of its volume from EVs or e-Power in that period. And in the U.S., Nissan expects more than 40 percent of its sales to be full-electric by 2030.

About 40 percent of the old engine factory's output is already dedicated to electric motor output, such as units for the e-Power hybrid system. That percentage is expected to expand through the end of the decade, Yokohama Plant Manager Tamiyo Wada said.

"We have other challenges that we want to take on in the future," Wada said. "We want to focus on new competencies as well and do this in parallel."

Top among them is the pilot program for solid-state batteries, bringing Yokohama, a plant that dates to 1935, into another new era.

Nissan believes it can deliver a battery by 2028 that holds twice the energy of a lithium ion battery, charges in one-third the time and costs $75 per kilowatt-hour. The company also thinks it can whittle that cost to $65 before too long, achieving price parity with gasoline-powered cars.

Through the end of the decade, Nissan's transition to electric and electrified vehicles will likely result in a dramatic reduction in head count at the factory because manufacturing motors and batteries is more automated and requires fewer workers, Wada said.

The automaker's goal is not to cut jobs, but to retrain the remaining workers for tasks related to the technologies that are being introduced, Wada said.

"As the scope of endeavors expand, the number involved in those processes will, too," he said.

Ironically, the ever-more efficient production of gasoline-burning engines will play an important role in electrification. That is because reaching lower costs and fatter margins on old-school engines will help deliver the funding needed to invest in higher-cost, lower-margin EVs.

Indeed, since 2017, when Nissan started production at Yokohama of its advanced variable compression engine, the VC-Turbo, the company has made several moves to improve quality, efficiency and costs, said Shinichi Kiga, director of Alliance Powertrain Engineering.

An example was the introduction of a robot to check the metal gap tolerances in the engine links. That was done by hand up until about six months ago.

On the three-cylinder VC-Turbo that Nissan uses in the Rogue, X-Trail and Qashqai crossovers, production engineers have cut manufacturing cost by 7 to 8 percent since its debut, Kiga said.

Engine output will continue at Yokohama around the same level for "some time," Wada said.

The engines made there are themselves an important component of Nissan's electrification plan. The automaker is already pairing units such as the powerful yet fuel-efficient VC-Turbo with the e-Power system to eke further reductions in emissions.

Nissan is giving the Yokohama factory an extended lease on life by using it as an incubator and test bed for future production technologies such as the upcoming sold-state batteries.

After introducing production of the VC-Turbo there, Nissan seeded production of a four-cylinder variant to plants in the U.S. and China. The bigger unit goes into such nameplates as the Infiniti QX50 and QX60 crossovers as well as the Nissan Altima sedan.

If all goes well with the solid-state battery production pilot, Nissan plans to launch mass-scale manufacturing in 2028. Doing so would help deliver on CEO Makoto Uchida's pledge to deliver the lightweight, compact, energy-dense batteries to market in just five years.

Editor's note: This story was updated to correct a reference to Shinichi Kiga's last name.