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Mercedes considering Mexico for CLA production

Would you buy a Mercedes-Benz if it were made in Mexico? That's what the German outfit is wondering, as it considers localizing production of the its new budget model at a factory operated by Nissan, of which the automaker is a joint-venture partner.
According to a report from Automotive News, moving production of American-spec CLAs from Hungary to Mexico would protect Mercedes from currency fluctuations. "Mexico is the best location for the United States," Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche told AN. The CLA is also expected to become the brand's volume model in the US market, which makes North American production a logical move.
In the event that Mercedes approves the plan, Nissan would expand the capabilities at its Aguascalientes, Mexico plant, allowing production to begin in 2018.

Nissan sees its EV sales surging to 1 million annually by 2022

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Nissan announced plans to sell 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) annually by 2022, a six-fold jump from what it sold last year, and said it had no plans to stop testing its self-driving cars on public roads, calling them safe. Japan's No. 2 automaker and its rivals are planning to crank up development and production of electric cars in response to tightening emissions regulations around the world, even as demand for such vehicles remains limited due to their high cost and limited charging infrastructure. Launched as the world's first mass-market all-battery EV in 2010, Nissan's Leaf compact hatchback is the world's best-selling EV, though sales have been just around 300,000 units in its lifetime. The company now plans to focus its lower-emissions lineup on all-battery and gasoline-hybrid EVs rather than costlier technologies including plug-in hybrids. Nissan said on Friday it would develop eight new all-battery EVs over the next five years, including four models for China. Its luxury Infiniti brand would begin carrying new electric models from 2021, it added. Through 2022, vehicles powered by its "e-Power" gasoline-hybrid technology would likely comprise the majority of Nissan's electric line-up, it said. Such vehicles use gasoline to power the car's motor, requiring a much smaller battery than EVs and therefore are less expensive to produce. "The heart of our strategy in terms of electrification is battery EVs and e-Power technology," Nissan Chief Planning Officer Philippe Klein told reporters at a briefing. Concerns about EV battery costs and components have prompted many automakers to develop a variety of lower emissions technologies, but Klein said that Nissan would largely forego plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell technologies, given their low cost-performance at the moment. In 2017, Nissan sold 163,000 electric vehicles globally. Nissan and its automaking partners, Renault and Mitsubishi, together plan to launch 17 electric models as part of their strategy to achieve annual vehicle sales totaling 14 million units by 2022, compared with 10.6 million units in 2017. Self-driving tests to continue Automakers and technology companies are facing mounting pressure to prove that their automated driving functions under development are safe to use on public roads following a fatal accident involving a self-driving car operated by Uber Technologies [UBER.UL] in the United States earlier this week.

Nissan battery breakthrough to double Leaf EV range within a few years

The Tesla Model S might be the headline-grabber of the electric vehicle world, but the Nissan Leaf is the segment's secret star. With over 130,000 sold worldwide since its introduction and record US sales in 2014, the little hatchback has helped its parents at the Renault-Nissan Alliance to sell over 200,000 EVs since 2010. With that much success in the EV business, there's no reason for the automaker to stop now, and according to CEO Carlos Ghosn a huge technological breakthrough is on the way to make plug-ins an attractive choice for more drivers than ever before. In an interview on Japanese TV, Ghosn confirmed that Nissan has a new battery that could allow for over 400 kilometers (249 miles) of range. New batteries could "very soon take the issue of range off of the table." – Jeff Kuhlman Ghosn was tight-lipped on the details of the tech, but Daily Kanban dug deeper. An unnamed Nissan engineer confirmed that the roughly 250-mile range would be for a Leaf-sized vehicle – a massive leap over the hatchback's current EPA-rated max of 84 miles or 124 miles in Europe. The battery reportedly offers twice the capacity, while bringing weight and costs down compared to the present version. "Commercial applications could be no more than one model cycle away," said the anonymous worker, making the innovation sound even more tantalizing. Lending even more credence to this major battery innovation, Nissan spokesperson Jeff Kuhlman told Daily Kanban: "We continue our R&D efforts because we believe that we can do more with battery electric, and very soon take the issue of range off of the table." Renault-Nissan is betting a huge portion of its chips on the future of battery electric vehicles. The company even tried stuffing a 48-kilowatt hour pack into a Leaf for an event in Spain last year. While not its primary focus, the automaker is hedging its bets slightly by working with Daimler and Ford on fuel cell innovations, as well.