St. Thomas Volkswagen Battery Cell Factory | ?m | 1s | PowerCO SE

ericmacm

ericmacm

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Volkswagen's battery production subsidiary, PowerCo SE, will be building its first battery plant outside of Europe (and so far its largest battery plant) on a portion of a 1200-1500 acre industrial site located on the northeast end of St. Thomas along Highbury Avenue South, just south of London.

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Are they using that vacated Ford factory lot for this?
 
UtakataNoAnnex said:
Are they using that vacated Ford factory lot for this?
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No, this is a new property that was assembled by the province. The old Ford Talbotville plant is currently being redeveloped with a new Amazon distribution centre.
 
These battery plants are absolutely massive and any single one will bring thousands of jobs. I do question if the industry actually has a reason to locate here more going forward, or if the incentives we offered this time around were a one-trick pony.
 
Sunnyside said:
These battery plants are absolutely massive and any single one will bring thousands of jobs. I do question if the industry actually has a reason to locate here more going forward, or if the incentives we offered this time around were a one-trick pony.
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It's difficult to say what would happen in a world without incentives. We will unfortunately never know because the US federal and state governments are also providing incentives for battery plants, which ultimately forced Canada's hand to offer incentives as well. I know there is a lot of discourse and opinions on whether or not these incentives are worth it, but I personally think they are, given the alternative of losing the automotive industry and associated industrial capacity/labour talent in Canada.

Canada does have a number of strengths competitively in the absence of incentives, however - electricity prices are cheaper (on average) than in the US, electricity is highly green and reliable with baseload hydro/nuclear (at least in Ontario/Quebec), existing presence of automotive manufacturing with associated experienced labour force, and the presence of large Critical Battery Mineral deposits in Canada. It makes sense to be located here if you want to keep the entire supply chain for battery production within a single country, which has been shown to be beneficial post-COVID.
 
ericmacm said:
It's difficult to say what would happen in a world without incentives. We will unfortunately never know because the US federal and state governments are also providing incentives for battery plants, which ultimately forced Canada's hand to offer incentives as well. I know there is a lot of discourse and opinions on whether or not these incentives are worth it, but I personally think they are, given the alternative of losing the automotive industry and associated industrial capacity/labour talent in Canada.

Canada does have a number of strengths competitively in the absence of incentives, however - electricity prices are cheaper (on average) than in the US, electricity is highly green and reliable with baseload hydro/nuclear (at least in Ontario/Quebec), existing presence of automotive manufacturing with associated experienced labour force, and the presence of large Critical Battery Mineral deposits in Canada. It makes sense to be located here if you want to keep the entire supply chain for battery production within a single country, which has been shown to be beneficial post-COVID.
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don't forget that you get american levels of skilled labour with significantly lower labour costs. Not as low as Mexico, but you also don't give up the skilled labour part either in Canada.

American wages have absolutely exploded over the last decade, particularly compared to Canada where wages have only grown slightly above inflation.
 
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