Nissan Needs European Loans to Continue Electric Vehicle Project

The Nissan Nuvu electric city car concept



Here is an interesting story. The Japanese motor company, Nissan, is pressing for huge sums of money from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The automaker is in a similar situation as most others, in that is becoming strapped for cash and the banks are not willing to loan large sums of money due to the recent financial crisis.

Eric Nicolas is Nissan's senior vice president of finance and administration and had this to say, "I need money to survive and we are not going to get it from the banks at the moment." Nissan has also held two high-level meetings in recent months with the Luxembourg-based EIB. The thrust of these meetings were attempts to obtain an initial injection of low-cost financing before year-end, according to Nicolas. Also during these meetings Nissan has told the EIB that it needs help towards the billions of euros it will cost to fund the European elements of its global electric vehicle project. This project is being orchestrated in conjunction with French alliance partner Renault.

In a separate application, Renault has already requested 400 million euros from EIB, which could be approved in the coming months.

The bottom line is that if Nissan can not obtain these loans, then the electric project will be halted as well as their current European research and development. Nissan is shooting for an electric car sales debut in 2012, so let's wish them luck. As I have said before, we need all the alternative energy automobiles we can get.