The news comes as combined production of the two models in Sunderland hits five million. Built alongside the all-electric Nissan LEAF, this development means that every model built by Nissan in the UK now has an electrified version.
The two electrified models are part of a previously announced £500m investment by Nissan into the plant to build the current generations of Qashqai and Juke. New facilities installed include a £10m state-of-the-art Battery Assembly facility, where battery packs are made for both the e-POWER and hybrid powertrains, before being delivered to be fitted into vehicles.
Building a team that has the skills to deliver the cars of the future requires a huge amount of training. Since LEAF started production in 2011, staff at Nissan Sunderland Plant have undergone more than two million hours of training dedicated to manufacturing electrified vehicles, with more planned in the coming months and years.
Alan Johnson, Nissan’s Vice President for Manufacturing in the UK, said: “Our plant is built on the foundations of 36 years of manufacturing excellence from our world-class people and advanced facilities.
“Two million hours of training just for electrification shows we are taking that to the next level, as we lead the charge towards an electrified future.
“And of course we’ll continue to deliver brilliant, technologically advanced, cars to the high standards of quality that our customers have come to love.”
The launches come after Nissan announced Sunderland Plant as the home of EV36Zero, a £1bn flagship electric vehicle manufacturing ecosystem bringing together electric vehicles, renewable energy and battery production.
Both the Qashqai and Juke are designed, engineered and manufactured by Nissan in its UK facilities, supporting more than 7,000 jobs in Paddington, Maple Cross, Cranfield, Lutterworth and Sunderland, as well as a further 30,000 in the wider UK supply chain and about 5,000 in UK dealerships.
