The industrial battle over electric vehicle batteries goes far beyond the question of a simple automotive component. At a panel discussion at the Tech For Industry Show, Pascal Bourcet, Managing Director France (Siemens Digital Industries Software) and Jean-Baptiste Pernot, Deputy CEO (ACC, Automotive Cells Company) detailed the industrial, economic and geopolitical stakes of this strategic industry for Europe.

Founded in 2020, ACC is owned by three industrial shareholders — Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and TotalEnergies (via its SAFT subsidiary) — and has mobilized several billion euros of investment in a particularly capital-intensive sector. The company has built three sites from scratch: an R&D, engineering and skills center in Bordeaux, a pilot line near Angoulême, and its first Gigafactory in northern France, whose capacity will be extended to 30 GWh starting next year. Around 2,500 people have been hired since launch. ACC now equips electric vehicles from Stellantis and Mercedes — for example as the exclusive supplier of long-range batteries for the electric Peugeot 3008 and 5008 — with the ambition of eventually supplying every electric vehicle manufacturer.

The origins of the ACC project date back to 2018, when the European Union pushed automakers to reduce their CO2 emissions through "CAFE"-type mechanisms, under threat of fines. This constraint made the automotive industry realize that the battery — which accounts for 30 to 40% of an electric vehicle's value, more than a combustion engine — was set to become the core of its future strategy. Yet almost all automotive batteries were, and largely still are, imported from Asia (Korea, and increasingly China). ACC doesn't aim to supply 100% of the European market, but to build a credible alternative that would allow the industry to break free of Asian dependence if needed.

Building a plant is, according to Jean-Baptiste Pernot, only about 20% of the overall challenge: the essential part is the ramp-up, which requires reaching yield and scrap rates in line with global standards. A Gigafactory produces millions of cells a year, requiring tens of millions of electrodes manufactured to micron-level precision, and tracking of 5,000 to 10,000 product and process parameters. The slightest variation — a small temperature or humidity fluctuation in the dry rooms, for example — can affect an entire production run without being detected before end-of-line testing. Even former automotive assembly plant executives joining ACC describe an unprecedented level of complexity, at the crossroads of chemistry, mechanics and electrical engineering. The main challenge then becomes the team's learning speed — hence the importance of training and upskilling, including support from Asian experts.

Competitiveness plays out both on production performance and on the supply chain for purchased components. ACC cites a production cost gap of around 30% between China and Europe for a component so central to an electric vehicle's value — a gap seen as unsustainable in the long run, which the company is working to close, notably through scale effects that remain limited in Europe due to insufficient volumes. According to Jean-Baptiste Pernot, this competitiveness can only be built at the scale of the entire industry, with an orchestrating role entrusted to Europe rather than to a single company.

The third challenge concerns the need for coordinated action at the EU level: standardizing production lines, supporting the development of European manufacturing equipment (still largely imported from Asia today for cell manufacturing), and ensuring consistent public policy (regulation, tariffs, local content requirements) over a long period — 10 to 15 years, following the trajectories taken by Korea, China or Japan.

The digital battery passport, an initiative driven by the European Union, is seen by ACC as necessary and desirable: traceability of components all the way back to the mine, precise knowledge of the manufacturing CO2 footprint, beyond just the vehicle's usage phase. But Jean-Baptiste Pernot warns against the idea that this tool alone would be enough to differentiate European batteries from Asian ones, as Chinese players are also adapting to increasingly strict regulations.

ACC doesn't recycle directly but relies on recycling partners investing in Europe. Current recycling mainly concerns factory scrap — a volume ACC is working to reduce. The real peak in end-of-life battery recycling won't come until after 2035, given a 15-year lifespan for current batteries. Technically, recycling rates above 90% are already achieved for the key metals in NMC batteries: this is therefore primarily an investment and planning challenge, rather than a technological one.

For Jean-Baptiste Pernot, digital technology is more than a strategic lever: it's a matter of survival, both for managing the complexity of production lines and for shortening R&D test cycles through simulation, capitalizing on knowledge through training, and integrating suppliers. The goal: using digital technology to catch up with the advantage historic players have built up over 15 years of human know-how.

On the Siemens side, Pascal Bourcet details what the Accelerator platform and the Teamcenter PLM bring to the table: building a digital twin of the battery and its production lines, ensuring digital continuity from cell design through to industrialization, and guaranteeing data traceability and integrity across the entire lifecycle. This digital twin and digital continuity foundation, he says, is the essential base needed before being able to develop artificial intelligence that is genuinely relevant to understanding business challenges.

The second lever consists of localizing the entire value chain, not just final assembly. ACC is working to help European players scale up, attract Asian players to produce in Europe, or foster joint ventures combining both — as with the announced partnership between Orano and a Chinese cathode active-materials player, to build a plant in northern France. The goal: securing, at a minimum, robust refining capacity in Europe, even if mining extraction itself remains elsewhere.

On the third lever, ACC believes the European scale is the right one for organizing the necessary economies of scale. The Chinese example is cited: in the years following 2010, China put in place a subsidy mechanism conditional on lists of eligible vehicles and batteries, whose rising performance thresholds directly drove the rise of its national champions — including CATL, now the world's number one, though initially lagging behind Korean players. Once its industry was deemed mature, China opened up its market. For ACC, Europe should draw intelligent inspiration from this kind of trajectory, without naivety.

The speakers conclude with three messages: the battery must be thought of as a complete value chain, not a simple component; digital technology is a genuine lever for industrial performance; and the success of this industry requires acting simultaneously on several levers — production, supplier ecosystem, regulation — rather than in isolation. Jean-Baptiste Pernot ends by stressing execution speed and the potential ripple effects of this industry into other strategic sectors, from mobility to defense to data centers.

Watch the full panel, along with the other Tech For Industry Show replays, on our dedicated page.