Vehicle maker Stellantis N.V. and battery producer LG Energy Solution (LGES) have signed a deal to establish a 45GWh lithium-ion manufacturing facility in Canada.
A joint venture (JV) company will produce lithium-ion battery cells and modules to meet a “significant portion” of Stellantis’ vehicle production requirements in North America.
The JV will invest more than CAD$5 billion ($4.1 billion) to establish operations, which will include a battery manufacturing plant in Windsor, Ontario.
Plant construction is scheduled to begin later this year with production operations planned to launch in the first quarter of 2024.
Plans for the plant were first announced last October when the firms entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to build a battery plant in North America.
Carlos Tavares, Stellantis CEO, said: “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.”
Global battery capacity
Stellantis has a planned battery capacity of around 400GWh, which will be supported by five battery manufacturing plants together with additional supply contracts.
Netherland’s based automaker Stellantis has previously entered into a MoU to form a joint venture with South Korea’s Samsung SDI for a battery plant to initially produce 23GWh, potentially rising to 40GWh.
Last month, Automotive Cells Company (ACC)— a consortium that consists of TotalEnergies (through its French cell making firm Saft) and Stellantis— finalised an agreement to allow Mercedes-Benz to become a partner.
By 2030, ACC‘s French (Billy-Berclau/Douvrin) and German (Kaiserslautern) plants are planned to produce at least 40GWh per year of lithium-ion batteries.
LG Energy Solution has secured production capacity of more than 200GWh in North America annually.
The battery manufacturer has previously announced plans to invest approximately $4.6 billion dollars into battery facilities in North America.
Pilot plant production
The two 1st cells produced in ACC’s newly inaugurated pilot-plant in Nersac have been sent to Belgium to be tested, in order to allow the firm to validate the chemistry and assembly.
The link between its R&D Center in Bruges, Belgium and Nersac will allow the firm to test all future innovations of manufacturing processes, their industrial efficiency, and their adaptation to the next generation of technology before deployment in gigafactories.
The Centre of Industrial Excellence of Nersac is a complete production line with equipment identical to that set to be used in the firms’ two planned gigafactories.
The facility will deliver prototype batteries, and allow ACC to test all its product and process innovations at scale before their industrial implementation in the gigafactories.
