GM and LG Chem officially announced their second joint venture battery plant Friday.
General Motors and LG Chem announced a second U.S. battery cell manufacturing plant on Friday, under their Ultium Cells LLC joint venture. The planned battery plant is supposed to cost $2.3 billion, and will be built in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Recently, GM and LG Chem were negotiating with officials in Tennessee, lobbying for a plant that would be similar in size and scope to the Lordstown, Ohio plant. A Tennessee economic development spokesperson declined to comment.
LG Energy pledged to invest more than $4.5 billion in U.S. battery production over the next four years. This new plant appears to be building a newer, less expensive type of mass-produced battery. It is unknown if it will be a second type of Ultium battery, or something else entirely.
GM and LG Chem are aiming at a less expensive battery?
“The addition of our second all-new Ultium battery cell plant in the U.S. with our joint venture partner LG Energy Solution is another major step in our transition to an all-electric future. The support of the state of Tennessee was an important factor in making this investment in Spring Hill possible and this type of support will be critical moving forward as we continue to take steps to transition our manufacturing footprint to support EV production.”
GM CEO Mary Barra
This move reaffirms GM and LG Chem’s pledge to seriously expand their electric vehicle production over the next few years. GM stated in January that they want to build an all-electric fleet by 2035. This lofty goal will require a sizeable battery production increase. GM is still the largest American automaker, so switching all of their internal combustion vehicles to electricity in fourteen years is ambitious.
It appears to be a race among major automakers to step away from internal combustion engines. Ford has stated their intention to increase their production of EVs in the near future. Recently, TFLtruck has been reporting on the upcoming GMC Hummer EV, and we’ve seen it testing as well. Along with a new batch of Chevrolet EVs, it appears that the first steps into an all-electric fleet have truly begun.
