On June 5, the overseas media InsideEVs reported that the new joint venture established by Stellantis and LG Energy Solution (LGES) with a joint investment of US$4.1 billion was officially named Next Star Energy Inc. The new factory will be located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, which is also Canada’s first large-scale lithium-ion battery production plant.
The chief executive officer is Danies Lee, who has held a series of global and regional lithium-ion battery promotion sales and marketing roles at LG Chem.
NextStar Energy Inc plans to start construction later this year (2022) and is scheduled to start production in the first quarter of 2024. When completed, it will have a capacity of more than 45GWh/year and will create 2,500 jobs. At the same time , the commissioning of the new plant will further accelerate the electrification transformation process of the Stellantis Windsor assembly plant.
In a separate announcement, Stellantis revealed that the company has signed a binding off-take agreement with Con Controlled Thermal Resources Ltd (CTR) for the supply of battery-grade lithium hydroxide for use in Stellantis’ North America Electric vehicle production.
That could mean CTR will supply lithium hydroxide from California to NextStar in Canada and another battery joint venture between Stellantis and Samsung SDI in Indiana. The contract volume is up to 25,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide per year over a 10-year period. This is an important step, not only to obtain a steady supply of key materials, but also to ensure that they are produced locally.
As part of the “Dare Forward 2030″ strategic plan, the Stellantis Group has increased the battery capacity reserve from the original plan of 140GWh to about 400GWh in the “Electrification Strategy” and “Software Strategy”.
Post time: Jun-08-2022