Nippon Electric plans to greatly increase the number of employees in China's motor R & D and production base.

According to foreign media reports, Nissan has the company's most advanced electric vehicle motor research and development center in Suzhou. In the Chinese market, speed is a crucial factor in winning and retaining Chinese customers.

Suzhou R & D Center was put into use in September last year to manufacture prototype products according to the needs of customers. Normally, the development of a prototype product takes six months to a year, but some customers have asked for power production to be completed within "a month and a half". The company needs more people to achieve such high efficiency. Before June 1 this year, the R & D center recruited a total of 170 employees. The company plans to increase the number of employees to 250 by March next year.

Suzhou R & D Center has the most comprehensive testing facilities in the industry, which can simulate a variety of conditions to test the durability of motors in high temperature or muddy conditions. In order to meet some seemingly impossible requirements put forward by customers, Depco even manages its work progress on an hourly basis and meets the customer's needs before the deadline. With this way of working, the company can sometimes steal customers from competitors. "We are using fast operations to capture this growing market," said Akitoshi Kato, head of the Suzhou R & D Center.

At present, electric vehicles in China are booming, and Depco hopes to make good use of this opportunity. This spring, Depco opened a motor factory in Dalian, where it plans to increase its workforce to 2000. In addition to the motor factory, Dansan has another factory in Dalian that produces other products, and its staff in Dalian will increase by 40 per cent to 5000 after a new round of recruitment is completed.

Depco currently has only one building in its new factory in Dalian, and the company also plans to build a second building, which is expected to become the world's largest motor factory, producing motors that can be used on 1 million electric vehicles a year.

According to a senior research official at Mizuho Bank, Depco has about 5.5 per cent of the Chinese electric vehicle motor market. The company ranks fourth in the market for drive systems, including gears and inverters, with a market share of 15 per cent.