Ontario’s once dying auto industry is in the midst of resurrection with a battery plant in Windsor, another on the way in St. Thomas and an exploding electric vehicle market
You don’t create one the world’s powerhouses in a 21st-century-defining activity without at least a bit of drama. And drama we’ve had in the fractious negotiations over an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Windsor, Ont. That “gigafactory,” already under development, is crucial to Ontario’s strategy to create an EV supply chain of world-class status.
Fortunately, that strategy has never been in jeopardy, despite some panicky concerns raised during the Windsor negotiations. More worrisome is the EV chain’s access to critical minerals. More on that later.
To a remarkable degree, the Ontario EV chain is already in place. Ontario’s legacy vehicle assembly plants are undergoing retrofits to make EVs and hybrids.
Last month, Ottawa landed a second gigafactory, to be built in St. Thomas, Ont. by Volkswagen AG. That makes two Canadian EV battery plants, or two more than experts thought possible in the early going. The feds have committed up to $13 billion in subsidies to the VW plant over the next eight years.
For the rest of this article: https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2023/05/25/a-trillion-dollar-payday-in-the-making-as-ontarios-ev-supply-chain-takes-shape-at-a-remarkable-pace.html