Lion Electric, a Canada-based manufacturer of all-electric trucks and buses for North America, was joined by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other officials on March 15 to announce plans for a new battery manufacturing plant and innovation center in Quebec.
The project is expected to break ground in the next few months. The factory will begin operations in early 2023 and produce battery packs and modules made from lithium-ion cells.
Given that the battery is the most expensive component of an electric vehicle, Lion said it expects to see a reduction in the cost of its vehicle manufacturing while better controlling and optimizing a key component of its supply chain.
The project and its development represent an investment of approximately C$185 million ($148 million) by Lion. The company is also getting about C$100 million ($80 million) in financial support from the federal and provincial governments. The facility is expected to create 135 direct jobs. Lion currently employs over 465 people at its other Quebec plant.
With a planned yearly production capacity of 5 GWh, Lion said it will be able to electrify around 14,000 medium- and heavy-duty vehicles annually. The company said it expects its highly automated factory to produce one battery module every 11 seconds and a full battery pack every 5 minutes.
Lion’s innovation center will focus on research and development, with the goal of exploring new advancements in performance, range, and energy capacity.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.