Great advantage: It has been mastered for decades and its industrialization on a very large scale is able to meet the needs of manufacturers, and finally to meet current needs. Indeed, the cessation of production of gasoline engines voted by the European Commission will necessarily accelerate the market, demand and therefore needs. It is anything but coincidence that, five days ago, the Renault group announced that it had entered into a contract with a Moroccan mining company, Managem Group, to ensure the annual supply of 5,000 tonnes of cobalt sulphate, for a period seven years from 2025.
The future, a neo-Aquitaine bet?
It is both to reduce the need for rare metals, to make batteries more durable, to divide their charging time as much as possible, to multiply their energy storage capacity that the historical players in the sector but also chemists and research centers private or university are launched in the race for the future Grail, the revolution of the “solid” battery, which will replace the liquids of the current batteries by ceramics or polymers is the subject of a competition. Manufacturers choose their “champions”. The Volkswagen group invested 300 million dollars for the Californian company QuantumScape created in 2010. Ford and BMW played the Solid Power card from the laboratories of the University of Colorado in 2011.
For the Stellantis group (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat Chrysler) and Mercedes Daimler/Benz, the bet on the battery of the future goes through the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Indeed, it is in a research center located near Bordeaux, in Bruges, the ACC site, a joint venture between Stellantis/Saft (a subsidiary of TotalEnergies) supported financially by the State and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, that 300 people, researchers and engineers are developing breakthrough technology.
Deliver in 2023 batteries “that do not exist”
At 117 km from Bordeaux, in Nersac in Charente, the “recipes” developed pass the test of industrialization in a pilot plant with a hundred employees. Soon a gigafactory located in Billy-Berclau (Hauts-de-France) will produce on a large scale these batteries “which do not yet exist and which the Asians do not know how to do”, promised Matthieu Hubert, secretary general of ACC to “Sud Ouest » last April.
Batteries – this is ACC’s commitment – which will equip the cars that will roll off the chains of its first customers, Stellantis and Mercedes, from the end of 2023. Tomorrow, then. In short, all the counters are panicking in the world of the electric car.
