IT is now expected to be summer before the Nissan Sunderland car plant learns whether it has won the contract to build electric vehicles, the company said last night.

Trevor Mann, senior vicepresident for manufacturing of Nissan Europe, said that a decision should be made by May or June on whether the plant gets production of the new Leaf.

The Sunderland plant has been one of the favourites to be awarded production of the Leaf, since Sunderland was named as the location for Nissan’s new electric car battery plant last summer.

A decision on the Leaf had been expected to come as early as this month.

Mr Mann, speaking at a Sunderland City Council parliamentary seminar on the automotive industry, held at the House of Commons yesterday, said the forthcoming General Election had absolutely nothing to do with the decision being put back until the summer.

Mr Mann said: “There is still a lot of work to go on and as a business things tend to change.

“We are not delaying a decision due to the General Election.”

He said that the Leaf was due to go into production towards the end of 2012, and decisions about location were usually to be made about two years before the production date.

Speaking about the possibility that the Leaf decision could have been announced early this month, he said: “That was a possible timescale. We tend to make the decision when we need to.”

Yesterday’s seminar, which was attended by representatives of the automotive industry, was chaired by Fraser Kemp, MP for Washington, Wearside.

Mr Kemp said it was held because it was important for “those of us involved in public policy” to hear from the industry so that policies could be put in place “that create the best possible environment for the automotive industry in the UK to prosper”.

Dave Smith, chief executive of Sunderland City Council, told the seminar that he had spoken to Nissan executives about the Leaf on a recent visit to Japan.

He said: “They were clear that the opportunity is there for us to grasp, if we demonstrate we can uphold our end of the bargain by putting in the infrastructure to support electric cars.”

Mark Prisk, Shadow Minister for Business and Enterprise, told the hearing he would not make off-the-cuff promises about what would happen if the Conservatives are elected.

But he added: “I have no doubt Nissan will come forward with proposals. We would want to give them all the reasonable support we can.

“It would be treated seriously because the sector is very important and very important for this part of the world.”

Earlier, professor Garel Rhys, automotive specialist and Emeritus Professor of Cardiff Business School, said: “The prospects for the motor industry in the longer term is excellent.

“In the next 20 years we will make more cars in the world than in the previous 110 years.”