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Nissan and NEC are to invest €75 million in their AESC Automotive Energy Supply Corporation joint venture that will make lithium-ion batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles.

The company, which is based at Nissan’s Zama factory in Japan, is due to start production in 2009 with an initial capacity of 13,000, rising to 65,000 a year. The first batteries from the plant are to be used in forklift trucks.

In a related development, NEC’s offshoot NEC Tokin is to invest €70 million in a plant to produce lithium manganese electrodes at a nearby NEC site. NEC Tokin is a 7 per cent stakeholder in AESC alongside Nissan, which holds 51 per cent and NEC which has 42 per cent.

The high-performance lithium-ion batteries employ a compact laminated configuration that delivers twice the electric power of conventional nickel-metal hydride batteries with a cylindrical configuration. Nissan says that AESC’s batteries have been validated to be safe and to demonstrate high performance, on average runs of more than 100,000 km.

The first commercial application for AESC’s Li-ion batteries will be in forklifts for small businesses in 2009. This will be followed by Nissan’s electric vehicle, to be introduced in the US and Japan, as well as Nissan’s original hybrid vehicle in 2010. By 2012, Nissan has announced its plans to mass-market electric vehicles to consumers globally, which will boost demand for batteries significantly.

Carlos Tavares, executive vice president of Nissan, said: “Nissan firmly believes the ultimate solution for sustainable mobility lies in zero emission vehicles. Electric vehicles represent one clear strategic direction embedded in Nissan GT 2012, our new mid-term business plan."

AESC has also been appointed as a supplier of Li-ion batteries to Project Better Place, a $200 million Californian venture that aims to reduce global dependency on oil through the creation of a market-based transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles. Project Better Place and the Renault-Nissan Alliance are planning for the first wide-scale deployment of zero emission vehicles in Israel and Denmark in 2011.