Cummins joint venture selects Mississippi as site for battery plant
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A recently announced joint venture between Columbus-based Cummins Inc. and three other companies has selected Mississippi as the site of its $1.9 billion electric-vehicle battery plant.
In September, Cummins announced that its zero-emissions business unit, Accelera by Cummins, was forming a joint venture with Portland, Oregon-based Daimler Trucks North America, Bellevue, Washington-based Paccar and China-based EVE Energy for the purpose of establishing a battery cell manufacturing facility.
Cummins, Daimler and Paccar each have 30% ownership in the joint venture, and EVE Energy has the remaining 10%.
On Thursday the companies announced that they had chosen Marshall County in Mississippi as the location for the joint facility, which has yet to be given a name. Marshall County is in the northern part of the state and is part of the Memphis, Tennessee, metro area. The facility, which will make battery cells for medium- and heavy-duty commercial electric vehicles, is expected to begin production in 2027.
The facility will have an annual production capacity of 21 gigawatt hours. (Battery plant capacity is measured by the total power of the batteries the plant produces per year. A gigawatt, which equals 1 billion watts, is enough to power 100 million LED light bulbs for an hour.)
“This site selection represents an exciting and tangible step toward advancing our Destination Zero strategy and our vision to lead the industry toward a decarbonized future,” Cummins CEO Jennifer Rumsey said in a prepared statement.
In a separate statement, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves said the project, which is expected to create 2,000 jobs with an average annual salary of around $66,000, represents the largest payroll commitment of any major project in that state’s history, and the second-largest economic development project.
The governor’s announcement noted that the project will receive Mississippi state incentives in the form of infrastructure and site preparation assistance and tax credits. The announcement did not say how much the state is offering.