Nissan to sell EV battery unit to Chinese firm

The Japanese company intends to focus on developing electric vehicles

Nissan is to sell its electric vehicle (EV) battery operations and production facilities to Chinese company Envision.

The Japanese car manufacturer will, however, retain a minority interest in Automotive Energy Corporation Supply (AESC), which owns and operates battery plants in Sunderland, UK and Tennessee, US.

AESC’s lithium-ion batteries power more than 340,000 Nissan LEAF vehicles – Nissan said the deal with help the company to focus on developing and producing EVs, in line with its 2022 vision of selling a million EVs a year.

Envision has connected more than 50 million smart devices used for wind, solar, energy storage, charging networks, EVs and home energy management – it also intends to integrate its Internet of Things (IoT) technology to make intelligent batteries and incorporate EVs into a future energy network.

Founder and CEO Lei Zhang said: “From an energy perspective, electric vehicles are mobile intelligent power stations and the growing number of electric vehicles will have a huge impact on the electricity grid. At the same time, customer anxiety related to the range of electric batteries and charge time is limiting the development of the sector.

“Envison’s smart IoT technology will make both the batteries and the charging process more intelligent. This will enable electric vehicles to be integrated into an energy eco-system and facilitate the intelligent, dynamic balancing of energy usage and generation in a world powered by fragmented renewable energy systems.”

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