Mercedes, Stellantis Battery Venture to Add Site in Italy

23 Mar 2022, 09:14 PM IST

(Bloomberg) -- The European car battery venture led by automakers Stellantis NV and Mercedes-Benz AG is adding a third manufacturing site in Italy, boosting the region’s ambition to become less dependent on Asian players.

The Automotive Cells Company’s planned factory in Termoli will be the venture’s third site in Europe for a total capacity of at least 120 gigawatt-hours by 2030, according to a statement Wednesday. Italian authorities have agreed to support the investment, it said, without providing details of the level of any subsidies.

ACC’s two other locations in France and Germany will each be able to produce at least 40 gigawatt-hours a year by the end of the decade, the company said.

The venture, which also includes energy giant TotalEnergies SE, has been gradually laying out manufacturing plans and boosting the scale of the investment since it was forged in 2020 by Total’s Saft unit and Stellantis, the carmaker formed from the merger of PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler last year. The Italian site will be developed at an existing factory that was part of the Fiat manufacturing footprint.

“We believe in a local for local sourcing approach and will develop and produce battery cells and modules with ACC in Europe,” Mercedes’s development head Markus Schaefer said in a separate statement. The German company entered the venture last year with a one third stake.

The government backing by France, Germany and now Italy is part of the European Union’s push to chip away at Asia’s dominance of EV batteries and create new jobs. The venture is going up against the likes of Sweden’s Northvolt AB, the battery manufacturer co-founded in 2016 by former Tesla executives that’s won contracts with Volkswagen AG and BMW AG.

“After only 18 months of existence, ACC is on track with both its R&D center in Bordeaux and its pilot site in Nersac already operational,” ACC Chief Executive Officer Yann Vincent said in the statement.