PowerCo St. Thomas Gigafactory

Volkswagen’s battery arm picked a small Ontario city for its biggest bet. PowerCo’s gigafactory in St. Thomas is the company’s largest cell plant to date and its first overseas cell-manufacturing site, a project planned at up to C$7 billion (about 4.8 billion euros) that will eventually turn out as much as 90 gigawatt-hours of battery cells a year.

Project Scope. Construction of the first major buildings began in late 2025, with foundation work covering roughly 79,000 square metres across three large structures. The plant will produce PowerCo’s unified cell, a standardized format designed for cost-efficient mass production that’s meant to power Volkswagen Group EVs across the North American market. Production is scheduled to start in 2027, with capacity ramping through later expansion phases. The project draws on a mix of government support and corporate investment, reflecting the public stakes Canada has attached to landing battery manufacturing.

Why It Matters. St. Thomas is one of the largest single industrial investments in Ontario’s history, and it slots the province into the cross-border EV supply chain anchored by automakers in Michigan and Ontario. For Volkswagen, building cells in North America is about insulating its EV plans from shipping risk and trade policy, and qualifying for the incentives tied to local content. The unified-cell strategy, one standardized format made at massive scale, is VW’s answer to the cost problem that has dogged EV adoption.

Project Team & Details