Mercedes joins Stellantis and Total Energies as partners of Automotive Cells Company
The joint venture plans to have an annual production capacity of 120 GWh of battery cells by 2030
Mercedes-Benz plans to be a fully-electric brand by 2030
Mercedes-Benz announced today its intention to join Automotive Cells Company (ACC), a joint venture launched by Stellantis and Total Energies last year in order to produce battery cells for electric vehicles in Europe.
Mercedes had already announced its goal to become a brand selling only fully-electric vehicles by 2030, and this partnership will help the German automaker to reach its goal.
ACC said it planned to spend more than €7 billion to achieve a production capacity of 120 Gigawatt hours of battery cells in Europe by 2030.
The joint venture is looking at building eight new factories dedicated to battery cells production, half of which will be in Europe.
Since Mercedes-Benz alone would reportedly need a capacity of 200 GWh of batteries to be able to produce only fully electric cars by the end of the decade, the automaker will continue to rely on external suppliers for its cells, but this dependency would be reduced.
The company claims having control in some of its supply chain will lead to economies of scale, as well as better technologies for the customers.
The addition of Mercedes could help ACC more than double its production capacity, which would make it one of the European leaders of electric vehicle technologies.
Details aren’t out yet to know if batteries produced in these factories will reach North America, but the promise of four new manufacturing sites outside of Europe means there could be cells produced by ACC more locally.
Interestingly, this partnership will lead to Chrysler and Mercedes working together again, since the two companies were merged between 1998 and 2007.
