Verified North American ESS cell production traceable to a named facility with confirmed output: 16.5 GWh, at LGES Holland, Michigan. Stated LGES North American ESS capacity target by year-end 2026: more than 50 GWh. That 33.5+ GWh gap is distributed across facilities acquired from dissolved or dissolving OEM joint ventures, at various stages of conversion, with no publicly disaggregated capacity figures. The entity absorbing most of these assets posted an operating loss of KRW 207.8B in Q1 2026.
Four OEM–Korean battery manufacturing joint ventures have unwound or entered active dissolution within roughly twelve months: BlueOval SK (Ford–SK On, dissolved December 2025), Ultium Lansing (GM–LGES, sold to LGES 2024), NextStar Windsor (Stellantis–LGES, sold to LGES for $100 in February 2026), and StarPlus Kokomo (Stellantis–Samsung SDI, BESS pivot with liquidation talks active). Each dissolution has been followed by conversion announcements. Almost none of those announcements can be verified at the production level from publicly available sources.
What follows classifies each facility's status as verified or announced intent, names the open questions the public record cannot resolve, and reads the accumulated pattern for what it implies about domestic supply concentration and execution risk.
Facility-Level Status
BlueOval SK, Glendale, Kentucky — Dissolved, Shuttered, Retooling Announced
Ford and SK On dissolved BlueOval SK in December 2025. The Glendale campus, originally planned for EV cell production at approximately 5,000 jobs, is now under Ford's operational control. The DOE finalized a $9.63B direct loan to BlueOval SK in December 2024. The borrowing entity dissolved twelve months later.
Conversion status: announced intent. Ford has stated it will invest approximately $2 billion to convert the facility into a hub for 5 MWh+ battery energy storage systems targeting data centers and utilities, with a 2027 reopening and 2,100 new hires. That rehire target represents a 58% reduction from the original 5,000-job plan, a delta that signals either the lower labor intensity of ESS production relative to EV cell manufacturing, a smaller conversion scope than the original build, or both. No capacity target in GWh has been publicly disclosed. No equipment supplier for the ESS conversion has been named. No offtake agreement for ESS production from this facility has been announced, and no chemistry selection (LFP or NMC) has been disclosed.
A WARN Act filing on December 16, 2025 notified the Kentucky Career Center of mass layoffs at Glendale. A second WARN filing dated February 12, 2026 delayed additional layoffs of roughly 1,500 workers; the source URL references "Georgia" in its slug, an apparent publication error, as BlueOval SK's three planned facilities were two in Kentucky and one in Tennessee. Approximately 150 workers were retained at the Kentucky campus, roughly three dozen of them controls engineers and production supervisors, per the filing.
The facility is not producing cells. No active conversion with confirmed equipment installation appears in the public record. This is a shuttered plant with a retooling announcement and a two-year timeline.
Ultium Lansing, Michigan — Sold to LGES, ESS Conversion Ramping
GM sold its stake in the Lansing Ultium Cells facility to LGES in 2024. Cleanest execution of the four: a direct sale transferring full ownership.
Conversion status: ramping, partially verified. LGES confirmed that Lansing production lines will serve the $4.3B Tesla ESS LFP supply agreement signed in March 2026. LGES's Q4 2025 results attributed a KRW 122 billion quarterly loss in part to investment in repurposing NMC EV lines to ESS at Michigan facilities, though the disclosure aggregated Holland and Lansing conversion costs without disaggregating them. No standalone Lansing GWh capacity figure for ESS production has been publicly disclosed. No independent verification of cell output at Lansing post-conversion has been identified.
Lansing is the strongest conversion case among the four dissolved JVs. It has a named customer, a signed supply agreement, and disclosed capital expenditure on retooling. What it lacks in the public record: a confirmed production start date and an independently verified output figure.
NextStar Windsor, Ontario — Sold for $100, Opened for ESS
The Stellantis–LGES joint venture in Windsor sold to LGES for $100 in February 2026. A grand opening on March 5, 2026 confirmed the facility producing ESS cells rather than the EV cells for which it was built.
Jurisdictional note: NextStar is a Canadian facility. Its inclusion reflects its relevance to the OEM exit pattern, but the regulatory, incentive, and trade policy context differs materially from the three US-sited facilities. Canadian federal and Ontario provincial incentive clawback provisions operate under a separate framework not analyzed here.
Conversion status: operational for ESS, verified. The March 2026 opening confirmed ESS cell production. No capacity figure in GWh has been publicly disclosed. LGES's January 2026 guidance named the "Stellantis JV" as a facility where it would "temporarily utilize certain production lines" for ESS output. Whether that represents full-facility conversion or partial line allocation is not specified in available disclosures.
The $100 transaction price is itself a signal. It implies the asset's value to Stellantis was zero or negative after accounting for liabilities. For LGES, it was an acquisition at negligible capital cost with conversion optionality funded by existing retooling budgets.
StarPlus Kokomo, Indiana — BESS Pivot Active, Dissolution in Progress
StarPlus Energy occupies a different position in the sequence. The OEM exit has not been completed. Stellantis confirmed in February 2026 that it has "ongoing collaborative discussions with Samsung on the future of our StarPlus Energy JV." KED Global reported that Samsung SDI and Stellantis are in talks to liquidate the venture. No concluded exit agreement has been publicly announced as of May 23, 2026.
Conversion status: NCA BESS verified operational; LFP announced intent. Samsung SDI confirmed in its Q3 2025 earnings disclosure that NCA cell production for BESS began at Kokomo in October 2025, producing cells for the Samsung Battery Box 1.7, a 6.14 MWh NCA-based system introduced at RE+ US in September 2025. The NCA chemistry designation is from Samsung SDI's own product disclosure and earnings statement. LFP cell production for ESS is stated as a future expansion, with Samsung SDI indicating phased LFP operations beginning "late 2026." No LFP production start, equipment installation, or signed LFP-specific offtake has been confirmed in publicly available sources.
Samsung SDI secured a $1B US ESS cell supply deal announced in March 2026, with cells to be produced at Kokomo. Initial supplies will use NCA cells, with LFP expansion planned. The customer was not named, though reports in 2025 indicated Samsung SDI was negotiating with Tesla for a multi-year, multi-GWh stationary energy storage supply agreement.
A second Kokomo plant, originally planned for 34 GWh with an early 2027 start, has no confirmed construction status given the active dissolution talks. StarPlus finalized a $7.54B DOE loan in December 2024 covering both plants. No public disclosure of DOE loan status under the current exit discussions has been found.
The Absorber's Balance Sheet
LGES now controls or holds JV stakes in the majority of this asset pool. It owns Holland, Lansing, and Windsor outright. It holds JV stakes in the Ohio and Tennessee Ultium plants with GM. It has stated a target of more than 50 GWh North American ESS production capacity by year-end 2026.
The verified-to-stated gap, consolidated:
| Facility | Status | ESS Capacity (GWh) | Key Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holland, MI | Operational, verified | Up to 16.5 | LFP ESS production confirmed May 2025 |
| Windsor, ON | Operational, verified | Not disclosed | ESS production confirmed March 2026 opening |
| Lansing, MI | Ramping, partially verified | Not disclosed | Tesla supply agreement signed; retooling capex disclosed; no output confirmed |
| Ohio & Tennessee JVs | Announced conversion only | Not disclosed | LFP line additions announced; GM stated mid-2026 restart; no ESS production confirmed |
Verified operational ESS capacity with a named output figure: 16.5 GWh. Stated target: more than 50 GWh. The gap is at least 33.5 GWh, distributed across facilities at four different stages of readiness, with no third-party production verification data publicly available for any of them.
LGES's Q1 2026 operating loss of KRW 207.8 billion widened from Q4 2025. The company attributed the loss to initial ramp-up costs at ESS production sites and a weaker product mix from lower pouch-type EV battery sales in North America. Revenue increased, driven by higher cylindrical EV and ESS shipments. LGES is simultaneously absorbing acquired assets, converting chemistry and application across multiple facilities, and ramping ESS production to meet the Tesla supply agreement. All while operating at a loss.
If LGES executes, North American ESS cell supply will depend overwhelmingly on a single Korean producer running converted EV lines. If LGES does not execute on the conversion timeline, there is no scaled alternative North American ESS cell supplier.
Samsung SDI at Kokomo is producing NCA for BESS at unspecified volume with an unresolved ownership structure. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence identified a 63 GWh North American LFP deficit in 2025 and projected the regional LFP and BESS markets will remain in deficit in the medium term. The absorber's operational and financial health is the binding constraint on this supply chain, and no fallback exists at scale.
Open Questions Named
DOE LPO loan status post-dissolution. The DOE finalized a $9.63 billion direct loan to BlueOval SK in December 2024. The borrowing entity dissolved twelve months later. No public disclosure of whether disbursed funds were clawed back, transferred to Ford and SK On as successor entities, or restructured has been identified. The StarPlus $7.54 billion loan faces a parallel question as Stellantis exit talks proceed. Combined, these two positions represent over $17 billion in DOE LPO exposure to JVs whose commercial rationale has collapsed or is at binary risk. The public record is silent on both.
Kentucky state incentive clawback. Kentucky's $250 million forgivable loan to BlueOval SK required 2,500 jobs by December 31, 2026, with the first forgiveness tranche ($10 million) contingent on reaching 90% of that target (2,250 jobs). Ford's own 16-month retooling timeline, targeting 2,100 rehires by 2027, makes the December 2026 benchmark structurally impossible to meet. Kentucky's economic development chief told legislators in February 2026 that the state would hold Ford to its commitments or claw back the funds. Governor Beshear stated the state "could recoup those dollars" but was in active negotiation "for what's fair." Both executive and legislative leadership flagged the April 2026 legislative session as a deadline for resolution. No public disclosure of a renegotiated agreement or formal clawback action has been found as of this writing. The outcome of the April session is a verification gap this piece cannot close.
ESS conversion economics at current LFP pricing. Chinese domestic LFP prismatic cell spot (314 Ah, ESS-grade) stood at approximately RMB 0.34/Wh (~$47/kWh) in Q2 2026, per Chinese tender data and InfoLink Consulting assessments. BNEF's December 2025 survey recorded the lowest observed LFP cell prices at $36/kWh globally, with North American pack prices running 44% above Chinese levels. CSIS analysis from May 2026 found that even with an estimated 58% tariff stack, US-produced LFP cells still require the 30% ITC to match Chinese imports on cost. Benchmark projected US LFP cell prices will remain over 40% higher than Chinese-origin cells through 2030.
No per-facility ESS conversion economics have been publicly disclosed by LGES, Samsung SDI, or Ford for any of the four facilities covered here. The LGES–Tesla $4.3 billion supply agreement, the Samsung SDI $1 billion ESS deal, and SK On's 7.2 GWh Flatiron Energy contract all omit per-kWh pricing. Whether the EV-to-ESS conversion thesis pencils at these facilities absent 45X production tax credits ($35/kWh cell + $10/kWh module) cannot be determined from publicly available sources. The 45X credit is the arithmetic bridge between US production costs and tariff-inclusive Chinese import pricing. Its availability to these specific facilities is itself uncertain: Benchmark assessed in July 2025 that US LFP production is unlikely to qualify for 45X credits because the majority of cathode active material originates from China, and tightening Prohibited Foreign Entity percentage thresholds under the clean energy tax credit rules (60% non-PFE material requirement in 2026) could disqualify cells produced with Chinese-sourced LFP cathode from eligibility entirely.
The Pattern and Its Second Derivative
Four dissolutions in twelve months. Ford, GM, and Stellantis each reached the same conclusion through different financial trajectories: battery cell manufacturing is a business they do not want to own at this stage of the cycle. The JVs were structured against EV adoption curves that assumed faster volume ramps than materialized. Samsung SDI's own earnings disclosure cited "sharp drops in battery demand from Stellantis" as the driver of its Kokomo line conversion. When the EV volume that justified a 40 GWh plant doesn't arrive, a JV structured around that volume becomes a fixed-cost liability the OEM wants off its balance sheet.
The Korean partners absorbed the assets because the assets carry conversion optionality the OEMs cannot or will not exercise. An NMC EV cell line can, with capital and time, become an LFP ESS line. The ESS market is growing. The EV offtake that justified the original investment did not materialize at the pace the JV structures required.
For procurement planning, the second derivative now supersedes the dissolution count. The dissolution rate is probably plateauing; these four cases likely represent the full cohort of vulnerable OEM–Korean JVs of this vintage. How fast the conversions translate into verified, shipping production is the unresolved variable. Every facility in this cohort is now in some stage of announced or actual chemistry and application pivot. The pace of those conversions determines whether the 50+ GWh of stated North American ESS capacity exists in 2027 or whether the verified base remains closer to 16.5 GWh with incremental additions.
The public record, as of May 23, 2026, shows one facility with a verified disaggregated production figure (Holland, 16.5 GWh). One facility confirmed operational for ESS without a disclosed capacity number (Windsor). One facility ramping with a signed offtake but no confirmed output (Lansing). One facility producing NCA cells for BESS with LFP conversion planned but unverified (Kokomo). One facility shuttered with a retooling announcement and no disclosed capacity target, chemistry, offtake, or equipment supplier (Glendale).
Execution risk concentrates in the gap between announced conversion capacity and verified production across these facilities. The entity absorbing most of these assets is operating at a loss. The policy instruments that underpin the conversion economics are themselves under uncertainty. And the public record, on the questions a procurement lead would need answered before committing to this supply chain, is largely silent.
The distance between announced capacity and verified production has rarely been this measurable, or this consequential.
Things to follow up on...
- LGES 45X credit eligibility: Benchmark assessed in July 2025 that US LFP production is unlikely to qualify for 45X credits due to Chinese-origin cathode active material, and the OBBBA's 60% non-PFE material threshold in 2026 could make this binding for every converted facility in this cohort.
- IRS PFE determination rules: The interim MACR guidance in IRS Notice 2026-15 left the definition of what constitutes a Prohibited Foreign Entity to future proposed regulations, meaning no facility can yet confirm its 45X eligibility with certainty.
- AESC's parallel US unwind: Chinese-owned AESC sold its Tennessee facility to US-named Fixx Energy with a Fluence supply agreement, an FEOC-driven divestiture that may preview the ownership restructuring path for other Chinese-linked battery assets.
- Stellantis–Samsung SDI resolution timing: KED Global reported in February that Samsung SDI and Stellantis are moving to unwind StarPlus Energy, but whether Samsung absorbs the stake, a third party enters, or the $7.54 billion DOE loan is restructured remains undisclosed three months later.