SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s LG Energy Solution (LGES) plans to spend $2.1 billion with General Motors to build a U.S. electric vehicle (EV) battery plant, parent firm LG Chem said on Tuesday.
LGES and GM are expected to fund the project equally via Ultium Cells, their U.S.-based battery joint venture, for what will be their third joint battery plant in the United States, LG Chem’s regulatory filings showed.
LGES declined to provide detail on the location or production capacity of the new plant.
In December, Reuters reported that GM had proposed building a $2.5 billion battery plant near Lansing, Michigan, with LGES.
LGES commands more than 20% of the global electric vehicle battery market and supplies Tesla Inc, Volkswagen AG and Hyundai Motor Co, among others.
It is already building two plants with GM in Ohio and Tennessee to manufacture 70 GWh of batteries, which could power about 1 million EVs by 2024.
LGES has production sites in the United States, China, South Korea, Poland and Indonesia.
Its announcement came ahead of the company’s market debut later this week after launching South Korea’s biggest ever IPO.
The IPO attracted $12.8 trillion worth of bids from institutional investors and $96 billion from retail investors.
The IPO price values LGES at about 70.2 trillion won ($58.57 billion) and will make it South Korea’s third most-valuable company after Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc.
($1 = 1,198.5800 won)
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; editing by Jason Neely)
