It remains in France
ACC, a European joint venture for the construction of car batteries, is scrapping two of the three battery factories planned for Europe. This leaves only the French factory.
ACC stands for Automotive Cells Company, a project by Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and Saft, which in turn is owned by Total. Together, the three wanted to prevent all EV batteries from eventually coming from China. Therefore, grand plans were made for the construction of at least three European gigafactories. These were to be built in France, Germany and Italy, not entirely unexpectedly given the origins of the three companies involved.
However, the increase in demand for electric cars is disappointing. Plans for the Italian and German factories had already been postponed, but now, according to Reuters, it’s even time for cancellation. The plans for the factories near Termoli in Italy and Kaiserslautern (a nice place!) in Germany have been ‘definitively shelved’ according to ACC.
In ACC’s original plans, the three factories would eventually each have a capacity of about 40 GWh per year, divided into three ‘blocks’ per factory. Now Reuters speaks of 13 and 15 GWh per ‘block’ in France.