11 Million Vehicles Produced

A huge milestone was recently passed by the team at the Nissan Plant in Sunderland, as they have been celebrating the 11 millionth vehicle being built there, since production started in 1986. As car number 11 million leaves the factory, this means that, on average, a new car has been built every 2 minutes for the last 37 years!

The incredible achievement was reached when a Blade Silver Qashqai e-POWER, one of three electrified models currently built at the plant, rolled off the line. Each one of these cars takes about 8.5 hours to build. In comparison, the very first car built at the plant in 1986 was a Nissan Bluebird and took around 22 hours to produce.

Nissan Sunderland’s mammoth car production numbers were achieved through the building of nine different models, with 22 variants. Four of these models – Qashqai, Micra, Primera, and Juke have all surpassed seven-figure production numbers. In fact, the Qashqai was the UK’s best-selling new car in 2022 with more than four million being built.

6000 people work at the Sunderland Plant where around 5 million parts arrive at the facility every day! Nissan also supports 30,000 UK jobs in the supply chain.

The Qashqai e-POWER and the Juke Hybrid both began production at the Sunderland Plant last summer and, already, 50,000 Qashqai e-POWERs have been made along with 20,000 Juke Hybrids. To make sure this incredible level of production is maintained, the plant is moving forward with its EV36Zero project, which consists of three main elements: a new electric vehicle, a 12GWh gigafactory with the company’s battery partner Envision AESC, and a microgrid to deliver 100% renewable energy to Nissan and suppliers.

Adam Pennick, Vice President, Manufacturing, at Nissan Sunderland, said: “This milestone reflects the vast experience that our world-class manufacturing team has in delivering the quality cars that our customers love.”

“We’ve come a long way since production first started with some iconic models on the way. But we’re always looking forward, and our fully electrified range and EV36Zero plan mean we have an exciting and sustainable future ahead.”