Four years after its creation, the company ACC began to market its batteries for electric automobiles, the first manufactured in France, and wants to become, despite the start-up difficulties, a “champion of European sovereignty” in a market dominated by China.
Automotive Cells Company (ACC), a joint venture between Stellantis, TotalEnergies Saft and Mercedes, inaugurated with great fanfare in May 2023 in Billy-Berclau, in Pas-de-Calais, near Lens, the first of four French battery factories, all located in Hauts-de-France.
2,000 battery packs planned for this year
By 2024, 2,000 battery packs should leave the factory – a figure which still seems minimal compared to the immensity of the premises and the four billion euros raised by the company this year. But ACC is then counting on a rapid increase in power, with a target of 150,000 car equivalents in 2025, 250,000 in 2026 then 2 to 2.5 million in 2030, or 20% market share in the European Union.
-The region sees it as a “third industrial revolution”, after textiles and mining, on the verge of creating thousands of jobs. The stakes are high: the EU plans to ban the sale of new thermal vehicles in 2035, leading to the forced creation of an industrial sector to catch up with Asian manufacturers of batteries for electric vehicles.
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