This morning I was at the Washington Business Centre, in the middle of the town’s sprawling automotive industrial estate, judging entries for the North East Automotive Alliance annual Sustainability Award, sponsored by Nissan. As I drove in and out of the estate, I passed the new electric drive chain factory and several battery gigafactories, supplying the production of the new third generation Leaf EV in the main Nissan factory. From the carpark, I could see the turning blades of several wind turbines which stand in Nissan’s large solar farm (the latter out of sight from the road but clear from the satellite picture above). An EV training hub was awarded planning permission late last year.

And I thought to myself, what a low carbon world!

And of course this is in complete contrast to the narrative in the media where the industry is portrayed as being crippled by this transition. Of course those articles don’t refer to Nissan, but usually preferring Stellantis as one of the latter’s executives has been making negative noises about EV mandates etc (but Stellantis still met the mandate). This is classic cherry-picking – cite the companies who aren’t happy, or who make a wrong turn or two, and ignore those who are quietly getting on with it.