KYOTO, Japan -- Japanese manufacturer Nidec said Monday that it will build a flagship electric vehicle motor plant in China, with production set to launch in the fall of next year.
Construction of the facility, in Zhejiang Province, will start in October and it will go online the same month a year later. It will be Nidec's fifth EV motor factory in China and its seventh overall. The investment amount has not been disclosed.
The plant will have the capacity to churn out 1 million E-Axle motor systems in a year, making it Nidec's largest production center for the component. The site will cover 73,000 square meters and employ about 2,500 workers at full capacity.
Apart from the E-Axle, the flagship plant will also make inverters, gears and other EV motor parts. Nidec sees the fiscal year ending March 2026 as a "watershed" period in which demand for EV motors will surge.
The company is investing roughly 300 billion yen ($2.3 billion) through fiscal 2025 to raise its overall E-Axle production capacity to 7 million units. That segment is expected to become profitable starting in fiscal 2023.
Nidec has sold more than 370,000 E-Axles cumulatively in China through April. The worldwide sales volume is projected to top 1 million units in total by the end of this financial year.
