It is in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, that Lion will set up its American factory for manufacturing electric trucks and buses, a site of 900,000 square feet.
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Production is expected to begin in the second half of next year with a capacity of up to 20,000 vehicles per year. This is indicated by the Saint-Jérôme company, whose shares begin trading under the symbol “LEV” on Friday in Toronto and New York.
Other states, particularly in the Midwest, were considered before choosing Illinois. “But Illinois really stood out,” says Lion CEO and co-founder Marc Bédard.
We were looking for a central location. The site is near Chicago and the freeways to several places in the United States pass through there. We also wanted electrification policies. We have seen that a lot is happening in Illinois at the moment. We also wanted there to be an abundant and qualified workforce because we will have an engineering team on site.
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Marc Bédard, CEO and co-founder of Lion
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There is also the fact that the management of Lion fell in love with the site.
Marc Bédard had already said that the American plant could be installed in an already constructed building abandoned by an automobile manufacturer. “Except that the factories we saw were 50 years old,” he says. “There was time and a lot of money to invest. But here, the site we identified in Illinois has the best of both worlds. It is a new building, the construction of which is already about 70% complete. ”
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, PRESS ARCHIVES
Lion CEO and co-founder Marc Bédard
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This site was to house a distribution center that companies like UPS, Amazon or FedEx could rent. “When we saw it, we said it’s for us. It’s wonderful because we can adapt it to our sauce. We will be able to do something extraordinary with it very quickly because we will be taking possession of it in the coming months. ”
Marc Bédard specifies that Lion signed a 15-year lease in Illinois with options that can add 20 additional years.
Lion’s current assembly plant in Saint-Jérôme, in the Laurentians, has a production capacity of 2,500 vehicles per year.
Lion estimates the size of the target electric market in North America at US $ 100 billion for city trucks and US $ 10 billion for buses. Large fleet operators like UPS, FedEx, Pepsi, etc. are all in the sights of Lion who announced this winter an agreement with the giant Amazon.
Lion announced last fall his intention to list his shares on the stock exchange through a merger with Northern Genesis, a special purpose acquisition company whose shares were already traded in New York. The operation with Northern Genesis brings in about half a billion US dollars to Lion, a sum that will be used in particular to finance the expansion of production capacity.
Founded 13 years ago, Lion suffered a net loss of US $ 97 million in 2020. Revenue reached US $ 30 million in 2019 and US $ 23 million last year. However, revenues could jump to over US $ 3.6 billion in 2024, according to management projections.
To date, most of Lion’s income has been generated from the sale of electric school buses. From now on, however, Lion anticipates that a “significant” portion of its revenue will come from its electric city trucks.
The company now has nearly 400 vehicles on the road and plans to deliver 650 vehicles this year.
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