LG Energy Solution and Stellantis NV announced they will invest more than $4.1 billion in a joint venture to build a new electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Canada. The 40 gigawatt-hour facility, which is expected to come online in 2025, will supply Stellantis’ Windsor assembly plant and others in North America, the companies said in a statement Wednesday. The South Korean battery manufacturer will invest around 1.5 billion US dollars, as it announced at a presentation in Korea on Wednesday.
“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 U.S. and Canada by the end of the decade,” Stellantis Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares said in the statement.
Competition among battery makers to increase capacity is intensifying in North America as automakers from General Motors Co. to Ford Motor Co. electrify their fleets and President Joe Biden seeks to encourage technological change. China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL, is said to be considering sites in North America for a massive $5 billion facility, and Japan’s Panasonic Corp. is in talks on the site for a new US factory that would supply Tesla Inc. The Windsor plant accounts for the lion’s share of an estimated $2 billion, LG announced on Wednesday. In a separate filing, the company said it will spend about $542 million to build its own plant in the United States to supply local electric car startups.
The Canadian project is the second for which Stellantis has released new details in a matter of hours. The carmaker announced on Wednesday that its joint venture with Mercedes-Benz AG and energy giant TotalEnergies SE has reached an agreement with Italy on government funding for a third manufacturing site in Europe.
Stellantis also announced last October that it would form a joint venture with Korean battery maker Samsung SDI Co. to build a facility in the U.S. that should come online in 2025 and eventually have a capacity of 40 gigawatt hours. LG Energy also plans to supply cylinder batteries for start-ups in the US from a new plant in Arizona. Korean media previously reported on the new Arizona plant, along with a separate production expansion in Michigan.