Its a very welcome announcement, so well done Daimler!
When everyone in Europe is/was falling over themselves to try to seduce Tesla to set up a gigafactory in their Country a reasonably pithy comment from the Electrek faithful suggested
from
https://electrek.co/2016/11/29/tesla-gi ... h-efforts/
Comment from Ian
Why bother with Tesla, these countries could build their own gigafactories, goodness me, Tesla's technology is Panasonic's. Any old fool can construct a large factory shed and place lithium cell manufacturing machines in it. Do Renault, or Volvo, or Fiat or Daimler not know how to make objects or put manufacturing robots in a factory building? Seriously, it's like having MacDonalds restaurants in France, or Dominoes pizzas in Italy. What's wrong with you Europeans . I think I will sell toy bricks to the Danish, and Flat pack furniture to the Swedes, or perhaps set up a charity to help Europeans tie their own shoe laces
Well the Germans look like they are beginning to appreciate the value of own shoelace-tying, although the Tesla evangelists in the comments point out that their gigafactory is 10 times bigger than Daimler's, and that Daimler's will be a "battery pack assembly plant" without manufacturing the cells.
Nissan have a battery manufacturing plant in Sunderland, and in 2016 additional investment was announced, but of the order of £26.5 Million. It would be fantastic if Nissan, pitched in with a further investment in the UK of the order of that announced by Daimler. Nissan do have French parents these days though which may not be to the UK's advantage.
The key thing in the investment decisions is a market for selling the cars. The UK is well-suited for an all-electric infrastructure...its small, its mostly urban, well covered by the national grid and journeys are in the main short. It is also well-suited, but a bit behind with the notable exception of Nissan, to have manufacturing facilities to supply the vehicles to the EV market. I'm all for bold policy statements and plans on this, and more so for practical action to facilitate and assist. I would even quite happily put up with our equivalent of Angela Merkel having a similar "staged photoshoot" at Nissan in Sunderland, should a similar level of investment be announced here
Regards Neil