On March 24th, it was reported that LG New Energy will spend nearly $1.4 billion to build a second independent electric vehicle battery plant in Arizona. The new plant will be the first plant in the United States to produce columnar batteries. Construction is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2022, with an annual capacity of 11GWH and scheduled to start production in the second half of 2024.

On the same day, according to the official news of LG New Energy, the company and American automaker Stellantis signed an agreement yesterday to set up a joint venture in Canada and the first large-scale domestic electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant to meet most of Stellantis's vehicle production needs in North America.

It is reported that the joint venture will invest more than C $5 billion (US $4.1 billion) to set up operations, including a new battery manufacturing plant in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Plant construction is scheduled to begin later this year and start production in the first quarter of 2024, with an annual production capacity of more than 45GWh.

According to the data, as part of the Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan, Stellantis announced plans to reach 5 million annual global sales of battery electric vehicles by 2030, 100 per cent BEV sales of passenger cars in Europe and 50 per cent of BEV sales of passenger cars and light trucks in North America. At the same time, Stellantis also increased its planned battery capacity by 140GWH to about 400GWH, which will be supported by five battery manufacturers and additional supply contracts.

Among them, Samsung SDI, another South Korean battery factory, also signed a memorandum of understanding with Stellantis on the establishment of a power battery joint venture company in the United States, (MOU). The battery plant, which is scheduled to start production in 2025, will initially have an annual capacity of 23 GWH and may increase to 40 GWH in the future. the battery plant will supply Stellantis car assembly plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

LG New Energy said it was gradually expanding its production network around the world, including Canada, the United States, Poland, Indonesia, China and South Korea. Together with the newly announced investment plan, the company has now ensured that the annual production capacity of more than 200GWh in North America will be converted into the production of 2.5 million high-performance electric vehicles.

Battery Network learned that LG New Energy is currently working with General Motors to build the third and fourth battery plants in the United States. The two sides of the third battery factory will jointly invest 2.6 billion US dollars to build the two companies in Michigan, USA. The new plant is expected to start this year, be completed in the second half of 2024, enter the first phase of mass production in early 2025, and plan to have an annual production capacity of 50Whh. The fourth battery plant plans to finalize the location of the fourth factory in the first half of 2022.

In addition, LG New Energy and Hyundai Motor recently announced that they will set up a battery joint venture in Indonesia, which is expected to be operational in 2024, with an initial planned annual capacity of 10GWH, but the two companies have agreed to increase the plant's annual battery capacity to 30GWh in the future based on demand.

According to the data released by the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, in 2021, the installed capacity of LG new energy in China's power battery reached 6.25 GWH, accounting for 4%; from January to February this year, the installed capacity of China's power battery enterprises reached 0.47 GWH, accounting for 1.56%.