The world’s fourth-largest automaker, Stellantis, has accelerated its “electrification” targets: it wants electric vehicles to account for nearly 50 percent of its sales in the United States by 2030 and to achieve an annual energy storage production capacity of 80 gigawatt hours for more than 1.3 million units.
With that goal on the horizon, this Friday, October 22, it is known that Stellantis signed an agreement with Samsung SDI to form a joint company that produces battery cells and modules for electric vehicles.
The company will settle in the United States, it would be called Stellantis Samsung SDI and the batteries produced will be delivered to the plants that the brand has in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The location of the new factory and the amount of the operation are not confirmed. In this sense, it is only known that the company’s electrification plan covers about 35 billion dollars.
The novelty comes less than seven days after Stellantis signed a very similar contract with the also Korean LG Energy Solution (LGES).
Stellantis is the company that was formally born in January 2021 after the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA (Peugeot).
Stellantis has said before that it wants to secure more than 130 GW / h of global battery production capacity by 2025 and more than 250 GW / h by 2030.
This project includes three energy storage factories in Europe (Germany, France and Italy) and two in North America. The one announced would be one (although it is not known in which state in the US) and the other is not confirmed (it could be Mexico).
The group, which has brands such as Peugeot, Fiat, Opel, Jeep and Ram, among others, in its portfolio, wants 70 percent of its sales in Europe to be electric cars by 2030.
The idea is for Stellantis-Samsung SDI to start operating in the first months of 2025 with a production capacity per year of around 25 GWh, to later bring that volume to 40 GW / h.
Samsung SDI is a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. It already has battery plants for electric vehicles in South Korea, China and Hungary, and supplies other automakers such as BMW and Ford.