Nissan Leaf, half cross-section model on display at EDS!

The car itself was donate to the City of Sunderland, as a gift when Nissan were awarded the honour of the freedom of the city of Sunderland. The car will eventually go into the city’s Wintergarden Museum, alongside Bluebird 1 the first ever car off the production line from the Nissan Washington Plant. In the meantime, until that happens the council requested that AMAP: The Institute for Automotive and Manufacturing Advanced Practice, part of the University of Sunderland, acted as custodians of the car, so that it could benefit students undertaking automotive engineering degrees at the university.

AMAP will be at EDS showcasing the University of Sunderland’s Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing project. Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing  (SAM) Project is a £10.9M ERDF project to support the implementation of product and process development and the introduction of technology within the SME manufacturing base within the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (NELEP) area, and beyond (subject to eligibility). The project is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) receiving £5.7M of funding, matched by £1.2M from the University of Sunderland and a further £3.9M from industry. As well as providing fully funded technical and research support to eligible SMEs, via industry specialist practitioners, it also offers access to equipment and facilities to investigate and understand new and emerging advanced manufacturing technologies, via its 6 factory areas. The project also has almost £2M in grants to support capital / product validation / tooling and other financial inhibitors to driving strategic development of both product and process. For eligible NE based manufacturing SMEs. Since its launch in January 2018, the first phase of the SAM Project , up to December 2020, helped drive £47.1 million in GVA to the hundreds of SMEs that engaged with the project, delivering over £800,000 in matched-funding grants and creating 290 jobs, from a recent independent report. This success led to the programme, led by the University of Sunderland, and aligned to the Northern Powerhouse Initiative, receiving an extension taking the project to June 2023.