Electric vehicle maker to build buses, trucks at Joliet factory
The Lion Electric Co., a Canadian EV truck manufacturer, is planning to invest $70 million to convert a newly built Joliet warehouse into a factory to produce up to 20,000 electric trucks and buses a year and create at least 745 jobs over the next three years.
Construction to repurpose the 900,000-squarefoot building will ramp up in the second half of the year, with vehicle production expected to begin in the second half of 2022. “It’s going to be the biggest medium- and heavy-duty EV truck manufacturing facility in the U.S.,” said Marc Bedard, CEO and founder of Montreal-based Lion.
As part of the agreement to bring the company to Illinois, Lion Electric will get tax credits worth $7.9 million if it meets requirements including $70 million in capital investments at the Joliet site and the creation of more than 700 jobs within three years.
Bedard said he plans to invest about $130 million and create 1,400 manufacturing jobs in Joliet over the next five to six years.
“These are solid manufacturing jobs in an industry that is growing, and in a company that is growing like Lion Electric,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a news conference Friday announcing the new EV plant.
Founded in 2008, the company has delivered 390 electric trucks and buses across the U.S. and Canada. Bedard said the Joliet factory will be the production center of a market with enormous growth potential over the next decade, as everyone from school districts to waste management companies begin to convert their fleets to EVs.
President Joe Biden is looking to boost electric vehicle adoption as part of his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. The proposal includes making the nation’s 500,000 school buses into a zero-emissions fleet by 2030. “I think that almost all of the trucks and the buses that will be sold in 10 years from now will be electric,” Bedard said. “The market is huge and Lion is there right at the beginning.”
The EV industry is gaining momentum in Illinois. Rivian, the startup electric vehicle maker, is launching production of its inaugural EV truck and SUV in June from a converted Mitsubishi factory in Normal.
Pritzker said Friday he was devoting the state’s entire $89 million VW emissions scandal settlement to building the EV industry in Illinois. Volkswagen paid Illinois to bolster EV infrastructure as part of the automaker’s massive 2016 settlement with federal and state regulators after its 2009-15 TDI diesel cars were programmed to cheat emissions testing protocols.
“Not only is Lion creating jobs in our state, it’s advancing my goal of having 1 million electric vehicles in Illinois by 2030,” Pritzker said.
Originally designed as a warehouse, the new Lion factory is located in an industrial park near an Amazon fulfillment center off Interstate 55 in Joliet.