Stellantis and LG Energy Solution have announced a CA$5 billion (£3.01bn) investment in a joint venture to build a gigfactory in Canada with an annual capacity of 45GWh.
The car-making group claims the Windsor site (just across the border from Detroit) will be the first large-scale, domestic battery factory in Canada, with a view to producing cells for Stellantis’s North American market, where brands such as Chrysler and Jeep are crucial to the conglomerate’s success. Last year, Jeep’s share of the US market was just over 5%.
Stellantis is reporting that the plant will be open in 2024 as it pushes for five million annual global EV sales by 2030. The ambition is for 50% of Stellantis’s North American market and 100% of its European market to be EV by the same date. Brands such as Alfa Romeo, DS, Lancia and Maserati will launch only EVs from 2025.
It comes as more manufacturers push for EV production in Canada. UK-based Britishvolt is hoping to open a 60GWh Quebec facility in 2026, while lithium mining is also being investigated in the country. Snow Lake Lithium’s 55,000-acre site is expected to produce 160,000 tonnes of 6%-lithium spodumene a year when it opens in 2024.
“Our joint venture with LG Energy Solution is yet another stepping stone to achieving our aggressive electrification roadmap in the region aimed at hitting 50% of battery-electric vehicle sales in the US and Canada by the end of the decade,” said Carlos Tavares, Stellantis CEO.
LG Energy Solution started as a subsidiary of the vast LG Chem conglomerate, South Korea’s largest chemical company, before being publicly listed in December 2020, and has a history of battery production stretching back to 1999. As of 2021, it had annual sales of $15.6bn (£11.8bn) across a range of battery technologies, with nearly 28,000 employees.
With this announcement, LG’s North American battery capacity is 200GWh, enough for 2.5 million cars.
Add your comment