In this roundtable, Pascal Bourcet (Siemens Digital Industries Software) speaks with Jean-Baptiste Pernot, deputy managing director of ACC (Automotive Cells Company, a joint venture between Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz, and TotalEnergies/SAFT), about the challenges facing Europe's electric vehicle battery industry.
The discussion covers three major challenges: successfully ramping up a Gigafactory built from the ground up (with micron-level manufacturing precision and thousands of parameters to control), staying competitive against Asian players with a 15-year head start, and organizing standardization, regulation, and supplier ecosystem localization at the European level.
The speakers then present three levers for addressing these challenges: digital technology (digital twin and digital continuity via the Siemens Accelerator platform and Teamcenter PLM, as a learning accelerator), building a localized European supplier ecosystem, and the need for consistent, long-term public policy at the EU level — notably around the digital battery passport and recycling.
