The government of Québec is currently conducting talks with Tesla to evaluate the potential for a possible supply chain partnership with the private electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, according to a report from Le Journal de Montreal (via Tesla North).
The news comes shortly after Québec’s provincial government announced plans for a $2-3 billion investment in local battery production, from the extraction of the required metals to the manufacturing of battery cells.
The government will need help from private companies to develop the sector, and the front-runner in the global EV race certainly makes for a good candidate. One Québec minister’s office confirmed on Monday that the government has met with Tesla, and talks are ongoing.
Mathieu St-Amand, a press manager for Québec’s Minister of Economy Pierre Fitzgibbon, confirmed that the latter met with high-level Tesla employees as recently as last month.
“The minister met with Tesla executives during a mission in California last month. They discussed Québec’s place in Tesla’s supply chain,” said St-Amand in a statement translated from French.
Back in August, the federal government announced a $5 million investment in the local development of ‘Project Arrow’, a homegrown concept electric car.
However, Canada needs to do a lot more to have any hope of achieving its ambitious goal of banning new gas car sales by 2035 — and this is a good start.
Québec’s investment plan will fund companies across the entire EV battery supply chain, from those that extract key minerals like lithium, nickel, and graphite, to the ones that forge battery cells out of them, and even companies that assemble EVs with those cells at the heart.
