While other manufacturers nervously scale back and Canadian battery material projects suddenly get “postponed indefinitely”, the Volkswagen Group has evidently decided that market jitters are simply background noise. Volkswagen’s battery division, PowerCo, has officially broken ground on its mammoth C$7-billion battery cell factory in St. Thomas, Ontario.
The ceremony on October 28th merely formalized what the crews had already started: laying down enough formwork (50,000 square meters) and pouring enough concrete (over 32,000 cubic meters) to permanently anchor VW’s long-term faith in North America’s electric vehicle future. This facility, PowerCo’s third globally after sites in Germany and Spain, is slated to become Canada’s largest single manufacturing plant.
The scale of the project is appropriately gigantic for a “gigafactory”. Scheduled to begin battery production in 2027, the site is designed to churn out up to 90 gigawatt-hours annually, enough lithium-ion juice to power roughly one million EVs.
This Canadian electric heartbeat will primarily supply Volkswagen’s North American ambitions, including the newly resurrected Scout Motors assembly plant down in South Carolina. It appears Canada is being generously positioned as the high-volume, cross-border battery supplier, proving that the solution to lingering US-Canada trade tensions is simply an overwhelming amount of cement. Not exactly the good one to all the problems of the North American market for Volkswagen.
Volkswagen executives have essentially shrugged, acknowledging the possibility of delays if EV demand doesn’t miraculously improve, but maintaining that the 2027 start time remains firmly in place. They’ve planned for years, awarded major contracts to local builders, and started hiring for what could grow to 3,000 jobs.
It’s a classic Volkswagen strategy: commit fully, build huge, and hope the market finally catches up to your ambition. If the EV sector doesn’t rebound quickly, St. Thomas will at least have the continent’s most impressive premature battery cell shell.
