QASHQAI AND MORE – If you have (or have had) one Nissan Qashqai (for which the update is coming, here for full details ), know that it was made in the UK, a Sunderland. This city of just under 200,000 inhabitants, located in north-east England near Newcastle, is home to the largest factory of cars in Great Britain. In this plant, which we visited, two other models from the Japanese company are being produced: the small Juke crossover and the Leaf electric sedan.
THE PAST – The Nissan Sunderland plant, also known by the acronym NMUK (Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK), is coming inaugurated in 1986 and contributes significantly to relaunching the economy of what is still one of the least developed English regions today. The first model built here was the Bluebird sedan, but the real turning point came in 1992 with the assembly of the second generation of the small car Micra: a successful car that conquers the public and critics.
THE PRESENT – Since 2006 this factory has been producing 4.4 million Qashqai: a crossover that represents 20% of all cars built in the UK in the last 18 years and which in 2022 was even the best-selling car across the Channel. In 2010 the assembly line was inaugurated Juke (1.4 million units assembled so far) and two years later it was the Leaf’s turn (282,000 cars produced).
EMPLOYEES AND SUSTAINABILITY – They work at the Nissan plant in Sunderland 6,000 employees, to which must be added the approximately 30,000 workers employed in related industries. It takes around 14 hours to produce a Qashqai and the most requested colour, as we noticed while walking inside the factory, is grey. Currently 20% of the energy consumed in the Sunderland factory comes from renewables. Inside the plant there are 10 wind turbines with a total power of 6.6 MW installed in 2005 and two solar parks: one of 5 MW created in 2016 and one of 20 MW recently inaugurated.
THE FUTURE – In the coming years the NMUK plant in Sunderland will will convert gradually to electric hosting the production of electric variants of Qashqai, Juke and Leaf. As we wrote herethe first two will have a design inspired by the Hyper Urban and Hyper Punk concepts unveiled at the 2023 Tokyo Motor Show while the third will have a style similar to that of the Chill-Out prototype presented in 2021. Both the production of vehicles and that of batteries (through a 7.5 GW Gigafactory extendable up to 35 GW in the medium term) will be powered by wind and solar parks: according to the house they will be able to provide 100% renewable electricity to Nissan and suppliers.
