Stellantis, the parent company of dodge, Jeep and Chrysler, has chosen COCOMO, Indiana, as the location of its next electric vehicle battery plant The plant will be built in cooperation with Samsung SDI, a leading electric vehicle battery manufacturer in South Korea. The two companies announced the news in COCOMO on Tuesday, local time, together with Indiana governor Eric Holcomb and several other local officials.
Stellantis CEO Mark Stewart said at a news conference that the new plant would create 1400 new jobs at a construction cost of $2.5 billion - but stellantis and Samsung were willing to invest up to $3 billion in the project. The cost will be shared between the two companies.
In fact, stellantis already operates some factories in COCOMO, including foundry, gearbox and engine factories. The company said the new EV battery plant would help accelerate automakers to promote the large-scale electrification of their product line. Stellantis had previously announced that it would work with LG energy solutions to build a $4.1 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ontario.
Stellantis is slower to accept EVs than Ford and general motors. It says it aims to sell 5 million electric vehicles by 2030. As the world's fourth largest carmaker, the company announced a comprehensive plan last year to electrify the product lineup of most of its brands - including the electric version of ram 1500 pickup truck and dodge electric muscle car and several Jeep models. Earlier this year, the company announced that Chrysler would only sell electric vehicles by 2028.
Stewart spoke at a press conference about the criticism of stellantis's backwardness in electrification. "Sometimes people think we're behind, (but) we don't. today, we have 25 different [battery electric vehicles] sold in markets around the world." (he later corrected this figure - 19 BEVS are sold worldwide).
"We only have two [plug-in hybrid cars] in the United States," Stewart added. "So when it comes to introducing BEVS into this market, we are backward, but not many."
As the automotive industry is slowly turning to electrification, the demand for expanding battery manufacturing capacity is growing. According to the data of GlobalData, a data and analysis company, globally, battery production is expected to increase from 95.3gwh in 2020 to 410.5gwh in 2024.
Stellantis's new COCOMO plant will be put into operation in 2025, with an initial annual output of 23 GWH. Its goal is to increase to 33 GWH in the next few years. It is reported that the company's Windsor plant will have an annual capacity of 45gwh.
In contrast, Ford said its three new battery plants would achieve an annual capacity of 129 GWH. General Motors is planning to build four new battery plants in the United States (also in cooperation with LG Chemical) with a total annual capacity of 140gwh, while Volkswagen aims to build six battery production plants in Europe with a total annual capacity of 240gwh by 2030.