First French EV battery factory has opened, production will start later this year

ACC, a joint venture between Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and TotalEnergies, has opened its first French ‘gigafactory’ for EV batteries. Production at that factory is scheduled to begin later this year. The company will build two more factories in Germany and Italy in the coming years.

ACC writes that its gigafactory has been opened in Billy-Berclau in Northern France. The factory’s first production unit should be operational before the end of the year. The ramp-up of that first production line should be completed by the end of 2024. The factory will eventually have three production units in total.

The company’s first production line will have a capacity of ‘more than 13GWh’. The plant’s production capacity is expected to reach 40GWh by the end of this decade. Production capacity refers to how much battery capacity is produced per year; the exact number of batteries depends on the capacity per battery. The French factory consists of more than 60,000 square meters of workshops and should create ‘approximately 2,000 direct jobs’ by 2030, ACC claims. The factory will produce lithium-ion batteries with a ‘minimal CO2 footprint’, the company says.

ACC was founded in 2020. This is a joint venture of Stellantis, the parent company of car brands such as Alfa Romeo, Citroën, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep and Opel. Stellantis owns ACC together with Mercedes-Benz and French multinational TotalEnergies. The factory in France is ACC’s first planned battery production site.

In the long term, ACC wants to build two other gigafactories in the European Union. Its second planned factory is scheduled to open in 2025. It will be located in Kaiserslautern, Germany. A factory in Termoli, Italy will follow in 2026. By 2030, the joint venture expects that the three plants will have reached their full production capacity of a total of 120GWh.

Source: ACC