Automotive Cells Company (ACC) will inaugurate its Industrial Center of Excellence on 11 March as it prepares to build the first “made-in-France” electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries by 2023.
The Centre of Industrial Excellence of Nersac in France is a complete production line with equipment identical to that set to be used in the firms’ two planned gigafactories.
The facility will deliver prototype batteries, and allow ACC to test all its product and process innovations at scale before their industrial implementation in the gigafactories.
Those processes include future innovations of manufacturing processes, their industrial efficiency (factory 4.0) and adaptation to the next generation of technology before building the gigafactories.
ACC aims to start battery production at its first factory in the Hauts-de-France (8GWh) in 2023 and the second 24-32GWh factory is due to be built in Kaiserslautern in Germany.
By 2030, ACC aims to produce batteries for more than 2.5 million vehicles per year.
An investment of €100 million ($111 million) was made by ACC’s shareholders Saft/TotalEnergies and Stellantis, and supported by local and national authorities, and FEDER funds.
The development comes 18 months after ACC’s creation, and less than six months after the inauguration of its Research and Development Centre in Bordeaux, France.
Yann Vincent, ACC’s CEO, said: “By inaugurating our Industrial Centre of Excellence, we are continuing to execute our business plan and will compete to become the European champion of batteries for electric vehicles.”
ACC is the result of an initiative undertaken by Stellantis and TotalEnergies —together with its subsidiary Saft— soon to be joined by Mercedes-Benz, and supported by France, Germany, and the European Union.
Last month, Umicore signed an agreement with ACC on battery recycling services for the pilot plant in Nersac.
Umicore’s battery recycling plant in Hoboken, Belgium, has an annual capacity of 7,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries and battery production scrap, the equivalent of 35,000 electric vehicle batteries.
The plant started operations in 2011 to treat portable electronics batteries and the first generations of EV batteries.
This year, Umicore will introduce the latest generation of its proprietary recycling technology.