(Alliston) Honda is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont., assembly plant, which it will retool to produce fully electric vehicles, all as part of a 15 billion project which should include up to 5 billion in public investments.
The announcement was made Thursday morning in Alliston, in the presence of the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and his Ontario counterpart, Doug Ford.
The two factories are expected to create a thousand jobs, in addition to retaining the 4,200 existing jobs at the assembly plant.
The deal does not involve production subsidies, which were used to convince two other automakers to locate battery factories in Ontario rather than the United States because of incentives under the Reduction Act of inflation.
But the federal government is expected to give the Japanese automaker about $2.5 billion in tax credits for clean technology manufacturing and electric vehicle supply chain investments.
Ontario has committed to providing up to 2.5 billion directly – notably for investment costs – and indirectly, notably to cover site development costs.
The $15 billion project includes the retooled plant, a nearby electric vehicle battery plant, as well as two key battery parts facilities – for cathodes and separators – located elsewhere in Ontario.
The Honda facility will be the third electric vehicle battery plant in Ontario, following in the footsteps of Volkswagen in St. Thomas and the Stellantis LG plant in Windsor.
The agreement comes after years of meetings and discussions between Honda executives and the Ontario government, which began after the last major government announcement made at Honda’s Alliston plant.
MM. Trudeau and Ford, along with Honda executives, were present in March 2022 when the automaker announced the production of hybrid vehicles at the plant, with $131.6 million in aid from each of the two levels of government.
This launched discussions about potential greater investment in electric vehicles, and negotiations began that summer.