Emmanuel Macron launches the “Airbus of batteries”

A pilot plant to manufacture Li-ion batteries will be built for 2021 in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

French President, Emmanuel Macron, launched with Patrick Pouyannée, CEO of Total, and the PSA group a pilot plant to manufacture European batteries for electric vehicles. For this occasion, he went to the SAFT site in Nersac in Charente, a French department.

The new plant is planned to start up in mid-2021 and represents an investment of 200 million euros. The success of this initiative will permit the construction of a gigafactory (8 GWh at the beginning, up to 24 GWh) which would be in the Haut-de-France region. A second plant would be built in Germany because the whole project is part of a French-German and European project.

Total, via its subsidiary SAFT, and the PSA group are jointly leading this project and intend to create a joint company called ACC (Automotive Cell Company).

In 2019, the European Union decided to support an “Airbus of batteries” to quickly develop an complete supply chain of Li-ion batteries. The Commission authorized, at the end of 2019, 7 Member States to invest massively in the creation of such a supply chain.

Speech by the President of the Republic in the presence of the employees of the SAFT factory (in French)