Nissan has officially opened the Nissan Motor Asia Pacific (NMAP) R&D Test Centre in Samut Prakan, Thailand. NMAP’s new facility will primarily service the five ASEAN countries of Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand; but will also provide testing for more than 90 countries around the world.
Nissan says that the new test centre will be the main R&D hub for ASEAN to better address customer needs in the region and to align more quickly to market requirements. The scope will be enlarged from the current quality assurance for product launches to the upstream product development phase of evaluation tests for trial prototypes.
“This work will be transferred from Japan to Thailand in order to ensure our products are aligned with market needs. And our vision is to further expand responsibility into the upstream phase of vehicle planning through taking a role in the digital stage,” said Hiroshi Nagaoka, corporate VP of Nissan Motor.
An additional investment of more than one billion baht has been made to the 6,600 square metre facility. NMAP today boasts an R&D centre with industry-first testing facilities in Thailand: an anechoic chamber, acoustic chamber and vibration simulator with environment chamber. By the end of fiscal year 2016, a total of 330 staff will be employed, with local engineers trained in Japan.
“NMAP R&D Test Centre represents an important milestone not only for Nissan’s presence here in the Kingdom of Thailand but also in the overall development of Thailand’s dynamic automobile industry,” said Kazutaka Nambu, president of Nissan Motor Thailand.
A total of 12 models will be tested at the new centre, including the Navara, Almera and X-Trail Hybrid. Nissan has 13 R&D centres across the globe.
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Even Nissan abandon ETCM, AP system top loser against world economic… Only BN ministry still pampered with them !
Car manufacture still prefer to invest at Thai over Msia even without AP or NAP.
Thai people are more trusted, productive, creative and professionalism compare to Malaysian.
Congrats tahniah to MITI the father of Thai automotive industry.
Test test almari.
Haha, tahniah BN. This is your best achievement for Malaysian auto industry. Your auto industry policy is the best in the world, good for cronies(sarcasm), but not good for rakyat.
Thailand should says thank you to proton.
So as an automotive engineering student i shall aim thailand instead lah har? =3= god bless msia
Sigh… nothing we can do, Thailand makes the most Nissans in ASEAN… they made some 220,000 units in 2012, but lately, Nissan’s Thai production has decreased to around 100,000 in 2014. Indonesia makes around 50,000 a year. We are third, followed by Vietnam and Philippines.
It’s still possible that Tan Chong Motor could have negotiated with Nissan Japan to build their ASEAN R&D centre here in Serendah… after all, Nissan Japan already trusted TCM with Nissan CKD production in Vietnam and Myanmar. But who knows, maybe TCM is short of capital… or maybe, and most likely, because of increasing corruption here.
Anyway, the best news is TCM Nissan is now no.2 non-national car company after Honda Malaysia as of Q1 2016 (Jan-Feb-March). Nobody could have guessed that UMW Toyota would have fallen to third place, but surprise surprise, they just did. I’d like to think it’s because of bad karma for years of kosong spec Vios… but the real truth is probably because of the ringgit exchange (price hike) and a lack of new models. UMWT will probably regain their second spot by the end of 2016… but it’s nice to see TCM beating UMWT after years and years of playing second fiddle.