Stellantis has a new battery testing facility operating in Windsor, Ontario, and the company is leaning on it to anchor EV development across North America. The North America Battery Technology Centre, completed at the end of 2025 and unveiled this week during the 30th-anniversary celebration of Stellantis’ Automotive Research and Development Centre, spans 8,600 square metres and houses 35 walk-in climatic test cells capable of running up to 63 battery packs simultaneously, plus 11 reach-in test cells for up to 132 individual cells. Operating range runs from -40 to +80 degrees Celsius. Storage capacity covers 120 EV battery packs on site.
The centre serves as Stellantis’ North American hub for developing and validating battery cells, modules, and packs for both BEV and HEV programs, consolidating what had previously been distributed testing work under one roof. A Turin, Italy facility opened in September 2023 covers the same function for European programs. Windsor is the North American counterpart. The two sites form the backbone of Stellantis’ global battery development network as the company pushes toward its FaSTLane 2030 targets: 35% volume growth, 25% revenue growth, and a 50% increase in North American market coverage through the launch of 11 all-new vehicles by 2030.
Funding for the Battery Technology Centre flows from the $3.6 billion CAD ($2.8 billion USD) investment Stellantis announced in May 2022 to secure its Canadian operations, with support from all three levels of Canadian government. The facility is expected to add approximately 55 engineering and technical positions on site.
The timing of the anniversary adds context to Stellantis’ investment calculus. The ARDC opened in May 1996 with a $30 million CAD commitment as the first industry-academia partnership of its kind in Canada. Thirty years later, Canada’s total R&D spend tied to the centre has grown to more than $2 billion. The facility now employs roughly 800 people across more than 93,000 square metres near Windsor Assembly Plant, conducting road-test simulation, extreme-weather testing, corrosion control, and nighttime headlight validation. More than 800 engineering co-op placements have run through the facility since 1996, drawing on partnerships with the University of Windsor, McMaster University, and the University of Waterloo.
Windsor Assembly Plant has been building minivans since November 1983, giving the site a production lineage that predates the ARDC itself. The R&D centre’s proximity to that plant is not incidental: having battery testing infrastructure next door to active assembly capacity compresses the loop between lab validation and production readiness, which is precisely the integration Stellantis says it is after. Combining battery pack development, testing, manufacturing support, and software management under one address is the stated strategy for bringing competitive BEV costs down.
Stellantis needs the centre to perform. The company’s North American lineup spans Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Alfa Romeo, FIAT, and Maserati, and nearly every product in that portfolio has touched the ARDC at some stage of development. The Battery Technology Centre extends that role into the EV era, giving Windsor engineering teams the tools to validate packs before they reach the production line rather than discovering problems after.
Fifty-five new positions and a completed building are the easy part. The harder question is whether Stellantis can convert the testing infrastructure into competitive BEV products on schedule. FaSTLane 2030 sets the clock; Windsor now has the equipment to help keep it.
Source: Stellantis. Images courtesy of Stellantis.
