Portugal set to produce 25% of the batteries for European electric cars

Japanese car maker Nissan started the construction of a plant in Portugal Friday to build batteries for electric cars.

The plant, located in Aveiro, 200 km north of Lisbon, will have the capacity to produce 50,000 car batteries per month, about 25% of the estimated need for electric cars in Europe.

“This is what our country needs. We need more factories, more jobs, and more production in the technological advanced products. We want to build a cluster for the electric energy in Portugal,” said Prime Minister Jose Socrates.

Portugal has unveiled a renewable energy development plan to reduce its heavy dependence on energy imports. Around 60% of country’s 20 -billion-euro trade deficit was due to fossil energy imports in Y2010.—Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr. www.livetradingnews.com

Posted by Shayne Heffernan on Feb 12th, 2011and filed underLatest News.You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site