On March 12, Carlos Tavares said that he was confident that Stellantis could catch up with Tesla in EV sales in the next two years. In other words, the CEO thinks his company will sell as many electric cars as Tesla by 2024. Stellantis is making sure it will have enough cells to get there with at least two deals announced on March 23.
The first one is about a joint venture the automaker has with LGES (LG Energy Solution) to build a 45-GWh/year battery plant in Canada. The new factory will be located in Windsor, Ontario, and production is scheduled to start by 2024.
Although Stellantis does not speak about why the plant is in Canada nor its plans for it, it seems the idea is to supply battery packs to the products made north of the U.S. Currently, the company manufactures the Chrysler Pacifica, Chrysler 300, Dodge Challenger, and Dodge Charger there. We’d bet the production version of the Chrysler Airflow will also come from one of these Canadian factories.
With this plant in Windsor, Stellantis could also quickly ship them to Michigan. The automaker will need a lot of them for its future electric pickup trucks, such as the RAM 1500. More than anything, these new cells will power products we are yet to discover. Many of them may be made in Canada. The cell factory in Windsor will create 2,500 new jobs.
The other announcement was about a new ACC (Automotive Cells Company) plant in Italy. To be precise, ACC will turn one of Stellantis factories into a battery plant. We’re talking about Termoli, a factory that is known for producing combustion engines, such as the Global Medium Engine, a 2-liter four-cylinder used by Alfa Romeo vehicles and also by the Jeep Wrangler – call that poetic justice.
This new battery and cell module plant will probably employ the same people Stellantis already has working there, even if their activities will be very different from those they have performed until now. The carmaker’s goal for it is to produce 40 GWh per year in batteries. ACC has two other factories in Europe: one in Douvrin, France, and another one in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Each of the ACC plants has the same projected capacity. When all three are in full operation, the battery manufacturer wants to have 120 GWh of cell production capacity per year. The goal is to get there by 2030.
ACC was a joint venture between Stellantis and TotalEnergies/Saft. With the announcement about the Termoli plant, the company made it official that Mercedes-Benz is a new partner, with equal shares and decision power as the other two. That means that the German company will also get these cells – possibly Mercedes-Benz's most affordable vehicles.
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