Detroit ― Michigan will be competing for a third battery plant battery plant in North America for the maker of Jeep SUVs and Ram pickup trucks, Mark Stewart, Stellantis NV’s chief operating officer, said on Tuesday, as the automaker prepares for a more rapid adoption of electric vehicles.
Stewart said Stellantis is expecting that it’ll need a third plant to launch in 2026 or 2027. A fourth possibly could follow by 2030 when it expects up to 53% of its vehicles sale will be all-electric here with 25 battery-electric options. The company is flexible based on the locations of its assembly plants, and it’s looking at locations in the United States, Canada and Mexico. An announcement could be coming within in the next four to five months, Stewart said, since it typically takes roughly three years to get a battery plant up and running.
“Michigan will be a part of that discussion,” Stewart told The Detroit News after a fireside chat at Reuters’ Automotive USA conference at the Huntington Place convention center downtown. “We’re going back and having discussions with with all of the states again, but … I told (Michigan Economic Development Corp. CEO) Quentin Messer Jr. and (Gov.) Gretchen (Whitmer) both that we absolutely want to want to engage in conversations and look at sites again, being close to our areas of core strength and our people.”
He added that those goals assume a strong acceptance rate of EVs and that vehicles can meet requirements of the legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act that offers up to a $7,500 subsidy for EVs. Few vehicles right now meet the North American supply requirements for the incentive, though Stellantis doesn’t have any EVs in North America right now. Its first, an all-electric Ram ProMaster commercial van, launches next year.
“There’s a lot of unknowns,” Stewart noted. “But we’re really optimistic on that side of it.”
The transatlantic automaker already has announced two joint-venture battery plants in North America, but Michigan has missed out. In Windsor, Ontario, with LG Energy Solution under the name NextStart Energy, a $4.1 billion plant starting in the first quarter of 2024 is slated to have 45 gigawatt hours of annual capacity, creating 2,500 jobs. In Kokomo, Indiana, with Samsung SDI, a $2.5 billion plant starting in the first quarter of 2025 is expected to offer annual production capacity of 23 gigawatt hours, though that could grow to 33 gigawatt hours. That should create 1,400 jobs.
Stewart said the company is open for discussion around with whom it would partner for the third and fourth battery plants, though working with existing partners could make sense. Previously, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares had suggested Automotive Cells Co., a joint venture that Stellantis has in Europe with petroleum company TotalEnergies SE and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz for a plant each in France, Germany and Italy, could expand to North America.
The News previously reported Stellantis and Samsung considered Monroe County’s Dundee, where Stellantis has a 1.3-million-square-foot engine plant, and a roughly 400-acre site in Marshall on the state’s west side. Properties near Belleville and Trenton were deemed too small.
Most of Stellantis’ nine North American assembly plants are clustered in Michigan with two in Detroit, one in Sterling Heights and one in Warren. Plus, there’s an assembly plant over the Detroit River in Windsor. Having proximity to those facilities is important to reduce logistical costs, challenges, safety risks and carbon emissions with transporting heavy batteries.
Of focus for the United Auto Workers is that it will represent workers at the new battery plants and they will be included in the master contracts to receive the same benefits as autoworkers at other facilities. Stellanits leaders have said the company is neutral on unionizing with it being up to the workers, but the UAW has criticized companies like General Motors Co. for not allowing a card check system that would allow for a plant to become unionized with a majority of employee support without an election. Stewart on Tuesday said he’s “agnostic” to the method so long as it is “handled properly.”
bnoble@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @BreanaCNoble