NEC

  • 2016 Nissan Leaf

    Nissan, alone among high-volume electric car makers, owns half of the company that makes the battery cells for its cars. Tesla Motors doesn't own any of Panasonic, which has supplied all cells to date for its three vehicles (though Panasonic owns a small part of Tesla). GM doesn't own any of LG Chem, nor does BMW own any of its various cell suppliers. DON'T MISS: Nissan's Electric-Car Battery Future: Will It Be With LG Chem? (Sep 2014) But Nissan and Japanese electronics maker NEC jointly own and run Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC), which they set up several years before the first...

  • 2015 Nissan Leaf
    Ghosn: Nissan Not Tied To Its Own Electric-Car Batteries, Will Seek Other Suppliers Pragmatically

    Batteries are the key component in building practical electric cars. And for its first all-electric Leaf in 2011, Nissan developed its own proprietary lithium-ion battery pack--even planning and setting up its own assembly facilities to build them. That trajectory started back in 2007, but today...

  • AESC lithium-ion cell
    Nissan LEAF: Battery Upgrades, Secondary Use Part Of The Plan

    Nissan is betting a lot of its future on the 2011 LEAF, along with other electric vehicles to follow—and more specifically, the proprietary batteries that each of them will have on board.

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