Nissan is considering a battery-making partnership with South Korea's LG Chem, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday (16 July), Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn commented that the company was planning to use batteries manufactured by the South Korean company in its future electric vehicles. In an interview, Ghosn said, "We have opened to competition our battery business in order to make sure we have the best batteries. For the moment, we consider that the best battery maker is LG."
Significance: Nissan already has a battery-making partnership with NEC Corporation, a Japanese multinational company headquartered in Tokyo. The alliance between the two firms is known as Automotive Energy Supply Corporation and it currently makes batteries for Nissan's LEAF. The decision to consider changing battery supplier comes as Nissan looks to improve the car's performance and cut costs in response to lower-than-expected growth in demand for the LEAF. The automaker expects these measures to increase the model's popularity among consumers. Nissan sold more than 60,600 units of the LEAF globally during 2014, up 27.6% year on year. IHS Automotive forecasts the car's sales to total 50,416 units in 2015. Nissan's alliance partner, Renault, also uses batteries manufactured by LG Chem in its electric vehicles. In 2014, Renault and LG Chem signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the development of EV batteries.
