The parent company of Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler, Stellantis, is planning to develop an electric vehicle battery manufacturing in the United States. The news comes after the automaker and LG Energy Solution of South Korea announced on Wednesday that they will invest $4.1 billion in a new battery facility in Canada.
The factory in Windsor, Ontario, will be the first of two planned battery plants from Stellantis and LG, which was founded last year when Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group merged to form Stellantis. The plant is planned to begin construction later this year, with operations beginning in the first quarter of 2024.
Officials claimed during the event announcing the Windsor facility that a second factory will be built someplace in the United States (via Breana Noble of The Detroit News). Another joint venture between Stellantis and Samsung SDI to establish a battery manufacturing in North America was previously announced. The second factory’s location will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Stellantis, which has been slower to embrace EVs than Ford and GM, has stated that it plans to sell 5 million electric vehicles by 2030. Last year, the world’s fourth-largest manufacturer unveiled a comprehensive strategy to electrify most of its brands’ portfolios, including EV versions of the Dodge Ram 1500 and an electric muscle car, as well as various Jeep models.
The demand to boost battery manufacturing capacity is growing as the auto industry gradually turns to electrification. According to GlobalData, a data and analytics organisation, global battery output is predicted to increase from 95.3GWh in 2020 to 410.5GWh in 2024.
Stellantis claims that their new Windsor factory will have a manufacturing capacity of 45 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per year. Ford, on the other hand, has stated that its three new battery installations will be able to produce 129 GWh per year. GM plans to build four new battery factories in the United States (together with LG Chem) with a total annual capacity of 140GWh, while Volkswagen wants to build six battery cell factories in Europe by 2030 with a total annual capacity of 240GWh.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has stated that the company’s first battery factory, which opened this week in Berlin, will eventually produce 250GWh, which is about similar to the present global battery cell production capacity.