The Department of Energy preliminarily approved another loan to help finance the construction of electric vehicle battery factories in the United States. This time, a joint venture between Stellantis and Samsung SDI will receive $7.54 billion to build two electric vehicle battery plants in Kokomo, Indiana.
The project is expected to create 3,200 jobs, as well as 2,800 operational jobs at the plants and hundreds more at a nearby supplier park. The conditional loan commitment will provide $7.54 billion ($6.85 billion in principal and $688 million in capitalized interest) to StarPlus Energy LLC, which is jointly owned by Stellantis and Samsung SDI.
The loan will come from the DOE's Advanced technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program, which was resurrected by President Joe Biden in 2022 to help fund the developing electric vehicle manufacturing industry in the US.
The project is expected to create 3,200 jobs, as well as 2,800 operations jobs.
Like the $6.6 billion loan conditionally approved for Rivian last month, the new loan to StarPlus Energy will have to beat the clock if it is to complete its approval before Donald Trump takes office.
Trump has promised to reverse or cancel much of Biden's spending on electric vehicles once he takes office. He has said he will eliminate the $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of new electric vehicles, as well as eliminate the rest of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) spending. That's supposed to also include the ATVM loan program, although it predates the IRA.
The loan program achieved almost mythical status in the world of electric vehicle startups thanks to its timely $465 million loan to Tesla in 2009, which is credited with helping save the company from an early death. But the program fell fallow during the first Trump administration, and several cash-strapped electric vehicle startups received no response to funding requests.
Stellantis-Samsung plants are the latest beneficiaries of the program. According to the DOE, the StarPlus project will produce about 67 GWh of batteries, enough to power approximately 670,000 vehicles per year when operating at full capacity.
Stellantis, owner of brands such as Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler and Ram, and international brands such as Peugeot and Fiat, is undergoing corporate upheaval that could determine its ability to meet the demands of the program. The company's CEO, Carlos Tavares, recently announced that he would resign amid a sharp decline in sales in the United States and abroad. And Stellantis is struggling to keep up with its competitors in the shift to electric and software-defined vehicles.
