Renault-Nissan postpone battery plant in Portugal

The Renault-Nissan Alliance has been forced to adjust its electric plan and with it the construction of an electric vehicle battery plant in the region of Aveiro, in Portugal has been postponed.

When it was launched the plans of this $203 million project Nissan and Renault estimated that by 2016 the plant would already have built about 1.5 million batteries. Now those numbers seem unachievable as the electric cars are not conquering the European drivers as quickly as analysts predicted, and consequently not needing to increase the supply of batteries.

With Portugal facing chronic unemployment and an economical crisis, the announcement caused a big uproar in the Aveiro region, as the plant was supposed to create about 200 new jobs.

Still the Alliance has come to public to explain that the battery plant project hasn’t been cancelled. In fact Renault and Nissan said that they will be giving a new purpose to the infrastructure, whose construction will resume in 2012 the two companies explained that they are still looking for options and that no decision has been made yet.

The Portuguese government has confirmed Renault-Nissan’s position. “This is a suspension of an investment and not a cancellation”, said Pedro Reis, the president of the Agency for Investment and External Commerce of Portugal.

Renault-Nissan also think that the if electric vehicles grow in popularity and sales start to increase the plant could be reconverted to its original purpose some time after 2015.