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LG expands its vehicle components business with a new factory in Detroit

Ronan Glon
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LG factory
South Korean electronics company LG has chosen America’s Motor City as the home of its brand-new factory. The 250,000-square-foot facility located on the outskirts of Detroit will begin producing power components for electric vehicles starting next year.

The company told Digital Trends it is recommissioning an existing building instead of starting from scratch. The facility will undergo significant renovations inside for the product lines. The project represents a sizable investment of about $25 million, according to LG, and it’s backed by a $2.9 million capital grant provided by the Michigan Business Development Program. State officials have also pledged to help LG hire and train workers at every level.

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The LG factory in Hazel Park, Michigan, will create at least 292 new jobs in the coming months, a figure that includes employees who will work in the factory and engineers who will move into the expanded research and development center located in nearby Troy. The company already created hundreds of jobs in the Wolverine State when it moved production of the Chevrolet Volt‘s battery pack from South Korea to a state-of-the-art facility in Holland, Michigan. The factory was recently expanded, which created 150 new jobs.

“When leading global companies like LG invest in Michigan and create hundreds of good, high-paying jobs here, it speaks volumes about the strong business and mobility climate in the state today,” governor Rick Snyder said. “LG’s great technological advancements and our outstanding workforce will help pave the way for the vehicles of the future right here in Michigan,” he added.

LG is relatively new to the vehicle components market. It never built carburetors, spark plugs, or ignition points, but the automotive industry’s gradual shift towards electrification and tech-intensive cars has opened up new possibilities for the South Korean giant. The vehicle components division has become its fastest-growing business thanks in part to a lucrative deal with General Motors. It supplies Chevrolet with numerous Bolt parts including the electric motor, the power inverter module, the on-board charger, the battery pack and the cells, the instrument cluster, and even the infotainment system, according to CleanTechnica.

As Bolt production increases, so do the revenues of LG’s vehicle components business. The division made $1.5 billion in the first half of this year, a 43 percent increase over the same period last year.

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