assembly plants
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The 2013 Nissan Leaf electric car is assembled in Smyrna, Tennessee, for North American sales. In fact, Nissan got a low-interest loan for $1.6 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy to make that possible. So why does every 2013 Leaf carry a window sticker saying that its U.S. and Canadian content is just 15 percent--while 80 percent of its parts content comes from Japan? Sticker shock The question arose in late July, coming from electric-car enthusiast Andrew Chiang, who photographed the sticker on a brand-new 2013 Leaf at Nissan Sunnyvale, in California. Chiang posted the photo in the...
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2014 Cadillac ELR Electric Car Will Be Built Next To Volt, GM ConfirmsColor us, oh, not very surprised at all. General Motors confirmed yesterday that it would build the 2014 Cadillac ELR range-extended electric luxury coupe at its Detroit-Hamtramck plant, on the same line that builds the ELR's Chevrolet Volt sibling. While this had long been discussed in the...
John Voelcker -
Toyota Prius To Be Built In U.S. At Last, But Not Until 2015
The Toyota Prius is the world's highest-selling hybrid vehicle and the third best-selling Toyota car in the U.S. Now, after one failed attempt, it appears that Prius production will come to North America--but not until 2015 or thereabouts, as Toyota first acknowledged back in July 2010. Koie Saga...
John Voelcker -
2014 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Will Be U.S. Made, Says Toyota
Buy a gasoline 2012 Toyota Highlander crossover in the U.S., and the chances are it will have been made at Toyota’s Princetown factory in Indiana. Opt for the more fuel efficient 2012 Toyota Highlander Hybrid model, and your car will have been made a third of the way around the world in...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2012 Ford Focus Electric: How It's Built On Same Assembly Line (Video)
With the first sales of the 2012 Ford Focus Electric registered last month, Ford's battery-electric compact hatchback enters the market to compete with the Nissan Leaf and other plug-in cars. Unlike the Leaf, though, the Focus Electric is an adaptation of a high-volume gasoline-powered car. And...
John Voelcker -
Where Will Chevy Spark EV Be Built? Maybe It's Michigan?
Two weeks ago, Chevrolet unveiled its 2013 Spark minicar and confirmed that it would offer a Spark EV all-electric model--a story GreenCarReports broke the night before. But within a few days, an intriguing question came up: Where does GM plan to build its first new all-electric car since the late...
John Voelcker -
You might call it pure propaganda, but confident young BMW worker Mirco Schwarze describes the process of assembling the BMW ActiveE electric car in a way that makes it all quite palatable. The short video below, barely longer than a minute, shows the BMW 1-Series assembly line at the carmaker's Leipzig plant, which is becoming its manufacturing center for all-electric vehicles. The BMW i3 (nee MegaCity Vehicle), the carbon-fiber all-electric urban car it will launch in 2013, will be built at Leipzig. And so is the ActiveE, the first-ever all-electric vehicle to wear the BMW rondel. The...
