A key component of the revised electric vehicle tax credit is a requirement for an ever-increasing amount of domestic content in those EVs’ battery packs. Automakers and battery manufacturers were already in the process of setting up US manufacturing to be closer to locally built EVs, and that trend has accelerated ever since.
At the end of August, Honda and LG Energy Solutions announced that they were forming a joint venture to build a US battery factory. And on Tuesday, the pair announced that the factory would be in Fayette County, Ohio, about 40 miles (64.4 km) southwest of Columbus.
Honda and LG will spend $3.5 billion on the new plant after regulatory approval. Assuming that happens relatively rapidly, the plan is to begin construction in 2023 and finish the building work by the end of 2024. Honda said that by the end of the following year, the factory should have an annual capacity of 40 GWh. Honda and LG also said the factory should create 2,200 jobs in the area.
“Honda is proud of our history in Ohio, where our US manufacturing operations began more than four decades ago. Now, as we expand Honda’s partnership with Ohio, we are investing in a workforce that will create the power source for our future Honda and Acura electric vehicles,” said Bob Nelson, executive vice president of American Honda Motor Co., Inc. “We want to thank the leaders of the state of Ohio, as well as in Fayette County, Jefferson Township, Jeffersonville, and Washington Court House for welcoming this new joint venture between Honda and LG Energy Solution and giving us another Ohio community to call home.”
The cells that the plant produces will be used in Honda’s new “e:Architecture” platform. The first EVs to use e:Architecture should go on sale in the US in 2026 and will be built in North America.
And yes, for those keeping count, that’s a separate architecture from the one that Sony is developing for production with Honda. The first of those EVs is due to go on sale in 2025. And from the Honda Prologue, an electric crossover developed together with General Motors that goes on sale in 2024.
It’s also not to be confused with Honda’s other GM collaboration. As we learned in April, Honda and GM are working on a range of affordable (sub-$30,000) EVs for North and South America as well as China. However, these EVs will use GM’s Ultium battery cells and won’t arrive until 2027.
