Question: Discuss the stages of the strategic planning process and its importance to senior managers at Nissan involved with the expansion into the electric vehicle battery market.

Discuss the stages of the strategic planning process and its importance to senior managers at Nissan involved with the expansion into the electric vehicle battery market.

Case Study:
Nissan unveils first UK battery factory plan Japanese car manufacturer, Nissan, has announced ambitious expansion plans for its existing
Sunderland site. The company will build the UK’s first electric-vehicles (EV) large-scale battery factory next to its existing car manufacturing plant.
The car maker will partner with its existing battery supplier, Chinese owned Envision AESC, and Sunderland City Council in an investment worth at least £1 billion in new production facilities with the aim of establishing a manufacturing hub focused on EVs and renewable energy named EV36Zero.
Nissan president and chief executive officer Makoto Uchida said the expansion was part of the firm’s goal “to achieve carbon neutrality throughout the entire lifecycle of our products”. He added that the new factory would make batteries for energy-storage systems as well as vehicles, and that expertise gained in Sunderland would be shared globally. Envision AESC Group’s founder and chief executive Lei Zhang said: “Growth in demand for EVs could bring future investment of up to £1.8bn, additional capacity of 25GWh and 4,500 jobs by 2030. This will put the North East at the heart of a new EV hub in the UK, collaborating on R&D around the whole battery lifecycle, from storage, to second life use, V2G [vehicle-togrid] smart charging, and closed-loop recycling.”
The UK Government has recently announced a ban on petrol and diesel vehicle sales from 2030 so the car industry is under pressure to increase the production of electric cars and these will need an appropriate infrastructure, including the supply of batteries. The UK Government is also in talks with a number of other UK based car manufacturers such as Stellantis over plans to build new EVs at its Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port, whilst Jaguar Land Rover are expected to announce its own plans to build manufacturing capacity for electric vehicle batteries.
The UK Government’s Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, called the investment ”a huge step forward in our ambition to put the UK at the front of the global electric vehicle race.”