Windsor has often felt forgotten at the southern end of Ontario, but now the region finds itself in the geographic and business centre of a rapidly emerging electric vehicle/battery industry.

With Volkswagen announcing its intention last week to build a massive 90-gigawatt battery plant in St. Thomas, Windsor will be within a two-hour drive of 10 battery plants and four battery research and development facilities on either side of the border.

Three of those sites are already locating in Windsor itself — the NextStar Energy battery plant, Stellantis’s major battery research and development addition to its existing Automotive Research and Development facility and Flex-Ion’s research and development plant.

“The Volkswagen battery plant is wonderful news for St. Thomas and the greater London area, but it’s a benefit to all of us in Ontario and natural progression from us landing the LG plant,” said Joe Goncalves, Invest WindsorEssex’s vice-president of investment attraction and strategic initiatives.

“We’ve already talked with a couple German companies about setting up here. We’re going through our list of suppliers to see who supplies Volkswagen and will be reaching out to more.

“There will be a spillover effect from the Volkswagen announcement.”

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