General Motors (GM) and Samsung SDI are building a $3bn electric vehicle (EV) battery cell plant in the state of Indiana in the east of the US. Operations at the plant are due to begin in 2026 with construction beginning this year.
The plant was announced by the companies in April but the location was not announced until 13 June. The plant will have more than 30 gigawatt-hours of capacity and will build nickel-rich prismatic and cylindrical cells.
“GM’s supply chain strategy for EVs is focused on scalability, resiliency, sustainability and cost-competitiveness. Our new relationship with Samsung SDI will help us achieve all these objectives,” said GM chair and CEO Mary Barra in a press release. “The cells we will build together will help us scale our EV capacity in North America well beyond one million units annually.”
The plant will create 1,700 manufacturing jobs, according to a press release from Governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb. GM has five battery cell plants in Indiana with more than 5,700 employees.
The project is GM’s fourth joint venture battery cell factory in the US. Three others are being developed with South Korea’s LG Energy Solutions; a 900-worker factory in Ohio has already begun building cells, while the other two in Tennessee and Michigan are still in development.
According to the International Energy Agency, EV and battery producers are set to become the largest consumers of nickel by 2040, taking over from stainless steel. Nickel demand is set to increase by between 60% and 70% in line with net-zero goals by 2050.
GM plans to sell only EVs by 2035 and the US Government has set a target for 50% of car sales to be electric by 2030. EV sales are predicted to increase by 35% in 2023, according to the IEA, and make up 18% of all car sales. If current rates of EV adoption and battery manufacture continue, a 2030 net-zero scenario will be successfully met, according to the body.
