DETROIT — Stellantis, as it prepares to introduce electrification across its lineup, and Samsung SDI on Friday said they have agreed to form a joint venture that aims to open a North American battery plant in 2025.
It’s the second North American battery deal that Stellantis has announced this week, following news of a joint venture with LG Energy Solution to produce battery cells and modules starting in early 2024.
The automaker has not said where either battery plant will be located. The plants will feed Stellantis assembly plants in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as the company works toward a goal of having electrified vehicles account for at least 40 percent of U.S. sales by 2030.
“With the forthcoming battery plants coming online, we will be well positioned to compete and ultimately win in the North American electric vehicle market,” Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said in a statement. “Our strategy to work with highly recognized partners boosts the speed and agility needed to design and build safe, affordable and sustainable vehicles that match exactly what our customers demand. I am thankful to all the teams working on this critical investment in our collective future.”
Friday’s announcement confirms a report earlier this week from Reuters, citing unidentified sources, that Stellantis and Samsung had reached a memorandum of understanding to create a battery joint venture.
The Stellantis-Samsung plant will have an initial annual production capacity of 23 gigawatt hours with the ability to reach 40 gigawatt hours in the future, the companies said. The Stellantis-LG plant also is slated to have a 40 gigawatt-hour capacity.
Stellantis is investing $35 billion through 2025 in electrification and software and plans to have four electric vehicle platforms that support driving ranges of 300 to 500 miles.
The company’s EV blueprint calls for it to control the value chain, which includes battery sourcing. The automaker said this summer that it will produce batteries at five “gigafactories” — adopting Tesla’s terminology — in Europe and North America.
Stellantis has a full slate of EVs in the pipeline, including an electric Ram 1500 pickup coming in 2024 that will joust with rivals including the GMC Hummer EV and Ford F-150 Lightning. Dodge has a battery-electric muscle car in the works for 2024, and Jeep plans to debut its first fully electric model in 2023.
