© Reuters. General Motors and Samsung are building a battery factory in the United States
General Motors Corporation (NYSE:) and Samsung SDI (KS::) announced Tuesday that they plan to invest more than $3 billion to build a new battery cell manufacturing plant in the United States with the goal of starting operations by 2026.
Reuters reported in January that General Motors and LG Energy Solution (KS:) will not proceed with a fourth battery plant in the United States. General Motors and LG Energy are building a $2.6 billion plant in Michigan that is slated to open in 2024 and is one of three joint venture plants for Ultium Cells LLC.
According to CNBC’s unnamed sources, the new GM Samsung SDI plant is expected to cost more than the Michigan battery plant, but no location will be announced immediately. However, the number of new jobs in construction and operations is expected to number in the thousands.
“GM’s supply chain strategy for electric vehicles focuses on scalability, flexibility, sustainability and cost competitiveness. Our new relationship with Samsung SDI will help us achieve all of these goals,” said Mary Barra, GM President and CEO. “The cells we will build together will help us increase our EV capacity in North America by more than 1 million units per year.”
“It is with great pleasure that we are taking the first step to establishing an industry-leading long-term partnership with General Motors in the US electric vehicle market,” said Samsung SDI President and CEO Yoon-ho Choi. “We will do everything we can to provide the highest quality and safest products produced using our unrivaled technologies to help GM strengthen its leadership in the electric vehicle market.”
The companies plan to jointly operate the facility, and it is expected to have production lines for building nickel-rich prismatic and cylindrical cells. The plant will have a capacity of more than 30 GWh, and the total US battery cell capacity for General Motors will be about 160 GWh when in full production.
According to GM Executive Vice President Doug Parks, the new combination will increase capital and technology for both companies to create new competitive advantages for GM.
“We will continue to scale production and improve our bag cell chemistry for performance, range and cost using new methods pioneered at GM’s Wallace Battery Center and our technology partners,” he said. “Introducing new cellular form factors will allow us to expand into more segments more quickly and integrate cells directly into battery packs to reduce weight, complexity and costs. With many strong cell partners, we can scale our electric business faster than we could go alone.”
Shares of General Motors rose 2.80% in premarket trading Tuesday.