Ann: World-Class Team to Support SYA North American Lithium Bid, page-49

And that is just the Half of it........ And whilst Quebec has tried and failed before at attempts to develop it's own battery technologies.....The fact that the words ' Lithium Hub ' are being used by it would seem anyone and everyone including our own SYA many time .....would suggest to me that it's definitely a Key Objective of the Quebec Government......

Quebec has quietly initiated discussions with giant Tesla to convince him to invest here rather than in Ontario for its potential battery factory, Le Journal learned .

"My team traded with Tesla. I'm going to the Consumer Electronics Show [CES] next January. It is possible that I go for a walk at Tesla, "confirmed the Journal the Minister of Economy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, last week.

For now, we do not know the scope of the project. The minister refuses to step forward, but sources in the government told the newspaper that his department was looking for investors like Tesla for a plant project in Quebec.

What we do know though is this : -

It would take an investment of $ 500 million to $ 1 billion to set up a battery plant in Quebec, according to the General Manager of Hydro-Québec's Center of Excellence in Electrification of Transportation and Energy Storage.

"In the past, technologies have been developed without customers and without manufacturers. We learned from our mistakes. Now, we know, if you make a factory, it takes us a manufacturer, and customers, "says Karim Zaghib, who won a prestigious Quebec science prize this week, in an interview with our Parliamentary Office.

Last year, Mr. Zaghib told the Journal that Quebec had all the assets to have a battery plant: technology, natural resources and skilled labor. He is still dreaming of this project and is delighted to see the government looking for private partners to embark on this adventure.

His laboratory has all the patents that would allow the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries for the automotive market and is well advanced in the development of the dry battery, the next technology in this area.

Mr. Zaghib, who has co-authored several articles with American John Goodenough, a new Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, believes that Hydro-Québec is at the center of an ecosystem that could make Quebec a lithium-ion hub. However, two essential ingredients are missing.

"Right: it takes us customers. You can not develop a factory and a technology without customers. Left: we want to make batteries. It should be associated with a manufacturer who knows it, "he said.

According to him, it would cost between $ 500 million and $ 1 billion to set up a fully automated plant with a capacity of 5 to 10 gigawatt hours (GWh). By way of comparison, global battery production was estimated at 104 GWh in 2017.