Stellantis, the parent company of Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler, has chosen Kokomo, Indiana, as the site for its next electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant. The factory will be built in collaboration with South Korean Samsung SDI, a leading manufacturer of EV batteries. The companies made the announcement Tuesday along with Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and several other local officials in Kokomo.
The new facility will create 1,400 new jobs and cost $2.5 billion to build, although Stellantis and Samsung are willing to spend up to $3 billion on the project, Stellantis chief operating officer Mark Stewart said at the news conference. The costs are shared between the two companies.
Stellantis already operates a number of facilities in Kokomo, including casting, transmission and engine plants. The addition of an EV battery plant will help accelerate the automaker’s push to electrify large parts of its range, the company said. Stellantis had previously announced that it will partner with LG Energy Solution to build a $4.1 billion EV battery plant in Windsor, Ontario.
Stellantis, which has been slower to adopt electric vehicles than Ford and General Motors, has said it is targeting sales of 5 million electric vehicles by 2030. The company, the world’s fourth-largest automaker, last year announced a plans to electrify the lineups of most of its brands, including EV versions of the Ram 1500 pickup truck and a Dodge electric muscle car, as well as multiple Jeep models. Earlier this year, the company announced that Chrysler will only sell electric cars by 2028.
As the automotive industry moves slowly towards electrification, the need to expand battery production capacity is growing. According to GlobalData, a data and analytics company, global battery production is expected to grow from 95.3 GWh in 2020 to 410.5 GWh in 2024.
To develop…
