Stellantis will invest AUD 76 million ($52.57m) in Australia-listed Vulcan Energy, becoming the second-largest shareholder in the company developing a lithium hydroxide project in Germany, Kallanish reports.

The deal, announced separately on 24 June, will give the carmaker an 8% ownership in Vulcan at a cost of AUD 6.62/share. The companies also extended their binding lithium hydroxide offtake agreement by five years to 2035, consolidating Stellantis as Vulcan’s largest offtaker to date. Volume details weren’t disclosed.

Proceeds of the transaction will go towards Vulcan’s planned geothermal production expansion drilling in its producing Upper Rhine Valley Brine Field. The renewable project is crucial to Vulcan’s planned Zero Carbon Lithium Project, which the developer says is advancing well.

“Making this highly strategic investment in a leading lithium company will help us create a resilient and sustainable value chain for our European electric vehicle battery production,” comments Stellantis’ ceo Carlos Tavares.

The carmaker has plans for five battery gigafactories in Europe and North America, with a combined production capacity of 400 gigawatt-hours. Vulcan’s Germany location is strategic for Stellantis’ European battery and EVs manufacturing, particularly the Opel plant at Kaiserslautern, where an ACC gigafactory is also planned. Stellantis is a shareholder in the ACC battery JV alongside Saft, TotalEnergies and Mercedes-Benz.

Vulcan says this is the world’s first upstream investment by a top-tier automaker into a listed lithium company. Its ceo Francis Wedin adds it’s “encouraging to see a leading automaker investing in local, decarbonised lithium production for electric vehicles.”

The Upper Rhine Valley development will see Vulcan produce both geothermal energy and lithium hydroxide from the same deep brine source. The €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) Zero Carbon Lithium project is set to start Phase 1 production capacity of 15,000 tonnes/year lithium hydroxide in 2024. Phase 2 will commission another 25,000 t/y capacity around 2025, taking the project’s total capacity to 40,000 t/y.