A $4.3 billion investment is going toward a battery cell manufacturing plant in Lansing, Michigan, to provide Tesla with prismatic battery cells.
Production at the LG Energy Solution facility is expected to begin in 2027 as part of a partnership between the South Korea-based battery company and Tesla. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, the battery cells “will power Tesla’s Megapack 3 energy storage systems produced in Houston, creating a robust domestic battery supply chain.”
In 2022, the project was announced as Ultium Cells, a partnership between General Motors and LG, but GM sold its stake in the partnership in 2024.
“There are over 2,000 construction workers making great wages, building that plant for the last two and a half years and of course, we’ll have 1,500 to 1,700 permanent jobs,” said Bob Trezise, the president and CEO of the Lansing Economic Area Partnership.
Trezise said major job creators like manufacturing plants have a real ripple effect on the local economy, too.
“How about the ancillary benefit that goes on for years and decades– landscaping companies, pest control, your garbage pickup. I mean, there must be 50 cases of different kinds of services that are locally owned businesses that serve a plant like that,” Trezise said.
The actual building that will house this new manufacturing is already built, and Trezise said he hopes to see this project as part of a green energy hub here in Michigan.
“The more energy that you can capture and save and keep from solar panels and from wind turbines, then the less likely it is that you have to use big diesel engines, for instance. And so we see this as is a really good overall thing,” he said.
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