France’s first battery factory for electric cars will open its doors near Lens on Tuesday, a major industrial event for the country, which wants to guarantee its independence from the Chinese giant and even become an exporter by the end of the decade, AFP reported.
This is one of Emmanuel Macron’s campaign horses: re-industrialisation would include battery production in France and Europe at a time when China has taken a significant lead in the field.
Thus, ACC (Automotive Cell Company), a joint venture (50/50) between TotalEnergies, Stellantis (formed by the merger of PSA and Fiat-Chrysler) and Mercedes-Benz, was the first to open its “gigafactory” in France.
Currently, only a few gigafactories are operating in Europe, but investments are growing on the Old Continent, where about fifty projects have been announced in recent years.
In the north of France, the symbolic territory of the country’s deindustrialization, four factories are to be launched by the end of the decade.
The first, ACC at Billie-Burklaw, near PSA’s historic site in Douvrin, will be followed by a project by Sino-Japanese group AESC-Envision in Douai (North), which will produce for Renault from early 2025.
Grenoble-based startup Verkor, which is backed by Renault, Schneider Electric and Arkema, plans to start production at the Dunkirk plant from mid-2025, also for the Renault group.
Finally, ProLogium, a Taiwanese group specializing in “solid-state” batteries, announced in mid-May that it will also open in Dunkirk, with production starting in late 2026.
20,000 jobs
Production at Billy-Berclau will begin this summer, and ACC plans to reach an annual capacity of 13 GWh by the end of 2024, with 600 jobs. From 2030, the aim is to employ 2,000 people to produce 40 GWh, equivalent to 800,000 batteries per year (500,000 according to the French government).
In the “Battery Valley”, as politicians and industrialists have dubbed the area, which stretches from Dunkirk to the former coal basin, this new industrial sector should lead to the creation of more than 20,000 jobs. (Dashark, Dreamstime.com)
Source: Hot News
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