Jane Edwards
General Motors and South Korea-based Samsung SDI plan to make an investment of more than $3 billion to establish a new facility in the U.S. to produce battery cells for electric vehicles.
The companies expect the manufacturing plant to be operational by 2026 with over 30 Gigawatt hours of battery cell capacity, according to a joint release published Wednesday.
“The cells we will build together will help us scale our EV capacity in North America well beyond 1 million units annually,” said GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra.
The planned facility will have production lines for cylindrical and prismatic cells and is expected to generate thousands of operations and construction jobs.
GM’s Ultium battery platform is designed to work with multiple cell form factors.
“The introduction of new cell form factors will allow us to expand into even more segments more quickly and integrate cells directly into battery packs to reduce weight, complexity and costs,” said Doug Parks, executive vice president for GM’s global product development, purchasing and supply chain.
