It’s been a little over a year since A123 Systems received a $249 million grant from the DOE, and today the company announced the grand opening of its Livonia, Michigan lithium-ion battery plant. The plant is the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility in North America, and is expected to boost the company’s manufacturing capacity by up to 600MW hours annually. The opening of the new plant puts A123 on target to achieve its annual cell assembly capacity goal of 760MW hours by the end of next year.

Click Here For Your FREE A123 Systems Analysis

At the Livonia plant, the company will manufacture prismatic cells and systems. Another plant, in Romulus, Michigan, is expected to come online later this year and manufacture coatings.

In a press release, Vieau, president and CEO of A123 Systems, commented on the grand opening:

“The opening of our Livonia facility is a significant milestone and confirms that we are accomplishing our stated objectives that accompanied the DOE grant. Bringing this factory on line in just over a year is a testament to our technology innovation and strategic plan to ramp up manufacturing, but it also speaks to the maturity of the market–without significant customer demand for our products today, a capacity expansion of this magnitude would not be possible. We are grateful to the DOE, the state of Michigan and everyone else who helped make this vision a reality. Over the next several years, we expect to create thousands of jobs in greater Detroit and plan to continue our expansion in the area as we do our part in helping the U.S. emerge as a global leader in the production of advanced lithium ion batteries.”