"They have bought a new home, their children are going to a local school, they have found work there, they have put down roots, and it is hard for them to return," he said. "There is enormous potential," said 4R Energy's Makino, who envisions "one day employing 1,000 people".īut that will depend on finding workers willing to take jobs in an area that remains largely deserted.įukushima governor Masao Uchibori recently acknowledged the difficulty of drawing people back, years after they have resettled elsewhere. Initially the Namie factory will handle several hundred units a year, but it has a maximum capacity of 2,250 batteries. It is betting on a growing stock of used electric car batteries as demand for the vehicles grows thanks to eco-friendly public policy and efforts to move away from petrol.Ī leader in the sector, Nissan aims to increase its electrified car sales six-fold by 2023, and other automakers are similarly ambitious. Work at the factory will begin in May, and while limited for now, Nissan has plans to expand locally. The recycled batteries will cost less than half the 650,000 yen ($6,100) price of a new battery.īatteries with lower performance will be recycled for use in smaller vehicles, including golf carts and fork-lift trucks, or used to store energy. Once analysed, batteries that retain most of their ability to hold charge will be refurbished and sold to replace those in first-generation Leafs, which hit the market in 2010. The process of analysing the 48 parts of each battery used to take more than a fortnight, but now takes just four hours. The facility will use new technology that can rapidly assess the performance of the lithium-ion batteries used by Nissan's electric car, the Leaf. "We will contribute to the reconstruction of Namie," said Eiji Makino, head of 4R Energy Corporation, the partnership between Nissan and Sumitomo Corporation that will run the factory. Nissan says it hopes to raise Namie's profile with the factory, which began going up shortly after the evacuation order was lifted. The government paid for two-thirds of the facility's construction costs in the hope of attracting people to the region.
"We need infrastructure, jobs, schools," Hoshino said at the factory. The other 80 percent of Namie is still off-limits, and in February just 516 people were registered as living in the city, compared with 21,000 before 2011. The government lifted evacuation orders on some tsunami-hit areas, including around 20 percent of Namie, last year.
and we are working hard" to bring residents back, said Reconstruction Minister Masayoshi Hoshino at a ceremony in the factory Monday. "Seven years have passed, the evacuation order has been lifted. The facility built by Japanese automaker Nissan in the town is employing new technology to recycle electric car batteries.įor now, the factory is basic, virtually empty, and employs just 10 people, but Nissan and government officials hope it might prompt other businesses to follow suit, and eventually draw people back to the region.