The French energy group Totalenergies is skeptical about the battery cell factory that the European joint venture ACC is planning in Kaiserslautern
The future of the planned battery plant in Kaiserslautern is becoming increasingly uncertain. It now symbolizes the failure of the ambitious European battery plans. Summary Listen
Merken Split Press
The French energy group Totalenergies is skeptical about the battery cell factory that the European joint venture ACC is planning in Kaiserslautern .
CEO Patrick Pouyanné in a conversation with journalists on Wednesday, said :
From my point of view as an industry representative, it is better to concentrate efforts on one plant than on three,
In doing so, he also questioned the sense of the plans in Termoli, Italy.
All that would remain for ACC is the battery cell factory in Billy-Berclau in northern France. It was inaugurated almost a year and a half ago. Production of the first block has started, the ramp-up is underway, and a second block is scheduled to go into operation later this year. ACC has not commented on the difficulties in the ramp-up, which have been reported repeatedly. Since the last capital increase in March 2024, the Totalenergies subsidiary Saft has held 25 percent, the German car manufacturer Mercedes 30 percent and the French-Italian car manufacturer Stellantis 45 percent of the shares in the company.
It is known that the production of battery cells is a complicated matter that requires a lot of chemical expertise, Pouyanné continued. He had made this clear in the past to Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares, who was fired in the autumn .
The Totalenergies boss, said :
These are not simply robots that you use like in a car factory,
If the other two ACC shareholders wanted more factories, they were welcome to have them. As car manufacturers, they do not pursue the same strategy as Saft. But his own priorities are Billy-Berclau.
Pouyanné explained,
Totalenergies will concentrate on France,
It is a risk to build a second factory when the first is not yet fully functional.
Plans are on hold
Due to the skepticism from Paris, it is becoming increasingly questionable whether battery cell production will ever see the light of day in Kaiserslautern. The old Opel site in the West Palatinate is now symbolic of the failure of the ambitious European battery plans. Production of “ultra-modern cells” was supposed to start there as early as this year, it was announced in September 2021. “With batteries made in Germany, we are securing added value and jobs of tomorrow!” enthused the then Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (CDU) at the time and presented a funding notice for more than 400 million euros.
But the plans for Kaiserslautern and Termoli have been on hold for months.
ACC announced,
We have decided to suspend our investments in Germany and Italy until we have adapted our industrial development plan to the actual needs of our customers and the market in Europe,
The company does not want to say when (final) decisions on Kaiserslautern can be expected. Rumors that battery cells for Mercedes luxury models are to be manufactured in Kaiserslautern are “baseless”. More on the topic
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The fact that business has been worse for Stellantis recently and CEO Tavares has had to leave does not make things any easier for ACC, observers believe. The project is already only of limited use as a success story for batteries made in Europe. Almost all of the machines used to produce cells in Billy-Berclau come from China, and the quantities produced by the end of 2024 are only enough for 2,000 to 3,000 vehicles. They will be installed in the electric Opel Grandland and in the Peugeot models e-3008 Long Range and e-5008 Long Range. The new DS N°8 will also be equipped with them.
The second block in Billy-Berclau will produce modules for Mercedes. Employees who previously worked in Kaiserslautern and Termoli are involved in this expansion. “The learning curve in large-scale production of batteries for electric vehicles” is more difficult than imagined when the company was founded in 2020, ACC admits.
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The French energy group Totalenergies is skeptical about the battery cell factory that the European joint venture ACC is planning in Kaiserslautern, source
