SEOUL Reuters - - South Korea's Stellantis NV said on Friday it had entered an agreement for a joint venture with automaker Samsung SDI to produce electric vehicle battery cells and modules in the United States.
The joint venture aims to start operations by the first half of 2025 with an initial annual battery production capacity of 23 gigawatt hours GWh, South Korean battery maker said.
The joint venture's annual battery production capacity could increase to 40 GWh in the future, Samsung SDI added.
The batteries produced at the Stellantis joint venture will be supplied to the U.S. factories in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Samsung SDI, an affiliate of South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics, already has EV battery plants in South Korea, China and Hungary, which supply customers such as BMW and Ford Motor.
The Stellantis-Samsung SDI tie-up comes less than a week after the world's No. 1 smartphone was released. 4 automaker signed a battery joint venture agreement with South Korea's LG Energy Solution to produce 40 GWh of batteries a year.
With these two joint ventures, Stellantis has secured up to an annual battery production capacity of 80 GWh, which could power about 1.2 million electric vehicles.
Stellantis, formed in January from the merger of Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler and France's PSA, has said it wants to secure more than 130 GWh of global battery capacity by 2025 and more than 260 GWh by 2030.
Samsung SDI shares rose as much as 2.4% to 740,000 won $628 their highest since late last month, versus benchmark KOSPI's 0.2% fall as of 0540 GMT.