labour. nissan has announced a major expansion of electric vehicle production at its car plant in sunderland, which will create more than 1600 newjobs don't like the japanese carmaker says it will build its new generation of electric models there with batteries on—site. these are the new engines of the world automotive economy. a new battery factory will make 100,000 of them a year, to be fitted to a brand—new model at a plant supplied by its own renewable energy grid. a £1 billion investment, creating over 6,000 jobs here and in the supply chain. today we're announcing the world's first manufacturing ecosystem, in sunderland, because of the skill and competencies of our workforce and the competitiveness of this plant. and i do believe that sunderland will become our flagship business model to apply