“Thailand is a key market for Nissan in ASEAN, and under the Nissan NEXT transformation plan, Thailand has become the company’s Southeast Asian production hub. Following our investment in 2020 with the production of the Kicks e-Power for domestic and export markets, including Japan, we have begun the local assembly of the Kicks e-Power battery in Thailand,” said Isao Sekiguchi, president of Nissan Thailand.

“This strategic step reaffirms our optimism and commitment for Thailand, which Nissan has represented for over 70 years as a rising and dynamic automotive market, a center of manufacturing excellence for the region, and one of Nissan’s global export hub,” Sekiguchi added.

The NPT production line that assembles the e-Power high voltage battery has innovative and efficient quality control management. It has an interlocking process of 100 percent with high accuracy equipment that helps to check every step of the assembly to eliminate errors to zero. The line also features a real-time production control system and 100 percent of the assembly data is recorded and stored for tracking.

Since 1988, NPT has produced several powertrains at its flexible production line, including a 1.0-liter turbo gasoline engine in the Almera, a 1.2-liter engine in the Kicks e-Power, the 2.5-liter turbodiesel engines in the Navara and Terra, and the manual transmission in the Navara. Now, following the latest electrified vehicle manufacturing technology, the assembly of the e-Power high voltage battery as well. NPT has a maximum of 580,000 units of overall production capacity per year.

Nissan Philippines will be launching a vehicle equipped with its electrified e-Power drivetrain later this year. Read our first impressions here.