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Battery requirements:
Daimler boss
Ola Källenius
wants to build a
"
European battery champion with global ambitions"
Photo: Ross D. Franklin / AP
Against the background of the envisaged electrification of Mercedes-Benz, the car manufacturer is investing in the French battery cell manufacturer ACC. The Daimler brand Mercedes-Benz, together with the car manufacturer Stellantis and the oil company Totalenergies, will be "equal shareholders" in the battery alliance of the major corporations, as the Daimler group announced in Stuttgart on Friday. According to this, all three partners should each hold a share of 33 percent. ACC was already the Stuttgart-based favorite for an alliance against the previous Asian supremacy in the cell manufacturer's market.
With the participation, Mercedes will also receive two of the six seats on the ACC Supervisory Board.
The investments amount to a total of "less than one billion euros".
In the coming year, Mercedes wants to invest a "mid three-digit million amount".
The transaction is also subject to regulatory approvals.
As early as the middle of the current decade, ACC will supply Mercedes with "high-performance battery cells and modules from its production sites in Germany and France," the company continued.
The battery cell manufacturer, a joint venture between Stellantis and Total subsidiary Saft, is also looking into expanding its production network to include additional locations in Europe.
So far, production is planned at the Kaiserslautern and Douvrin locations.
The next step towards electrifying Mercedes cars
It was only in July that Daimler publicly decided to invest in battery cell plants itself in order to secure the supply of its future electric cars with batteries.
Since then, Daimler boss
Ola Källenius
(52) has been looking for partners for the project to set up a production capacity of more than 200 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery cells per year by the end of the decade.
By 2030, Daimler wants to be able to sell only fully electric Mercedes-Benz cars, wherever market conditions allow.
In mathematical terms, 200 gigawatt hours of cell capacity would be sufficient for 2.5 million current Mercedes EQC models, each with 80 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity storage.
"Through the partnership, we secure the scope of delivery, use economies of scale and can offer our customers superior battery technology," explained
Källenius
.
The alliance with the French auto giant Stellantis (Peugeot, Citroen, Opel, Fiat) and the oil company Totalenergies is part of these efforts.
According to Daimler, ACC aims to produce at least 120 gigawatt hours of battery cells per year by the end of the decade.
How much of this is planned for Daimler was initially not known.
From the middle of the decade, ACC will supply Mercedes-Benz with battery cells and modules from factories in Germany and France.
The total investment in ACC is expected to amount to more than 7 billion euros.
cs / AFP, dpa-afx, Reuters
