France is developing domestic production of batteries for electric vehicles with a view to industrial independence, but Asian experts appear to play a key role in kick-starting operations.
At the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which will be inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, mainly from South Korea and Malaysia, train local staff.
Verkor is the third battery factory to open in northern France, in a region known as “Battery Valley”.
At the AESC factory near the city of Douai, where production has been underway for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits.
“They are the ones who train us in the equipment, how to operate it and how to solve problems,” says Ericka Redjimi, 39.
Redjimi joined AESC in May without any industry experience.
“I sold clothes at open-air markets,” she said.
Communication can prove complicated.
“We use Google Translate often.”
“I still need them, much less than in the beginning,” but “it’s reassuring that they are still there,” said Redjimi, who works in the part of the factory that makes battery cells.
Once ready, autonomous robot sleds transport the cells to another part of the factory where they are assembled into battery modules used to power Renault’s R4 and R5 models, as well as the Nissan Micra.
– Transfer of skills –
By the end of the first quarter of 2026, the plant should be operating at full speed, producing batteries to equip 150,000 to 200,000 vehicles per year, said Ayumi Kurose, head of operations at AESC France.
He said the first few months of production had gone pretty much as expected.
“What’s always complicated is controlling the equipment,” which often comes from Asia, and training the staff, Kurose said.
AESC, founded in Japan but now owned by China’s Envision, has been producing batteries for electric cars in Asia for 15 years.
The group can rely on its internal know-how to ensure “good practices from the start” in its new factories elsewhere in the world, Kurose said.
He said there are currently nearly 150 Chinese experts working in Douai and managing 800 local staff.
This includes experts in the field of vision-based control of industrial machines and advanced soldering techniques.
“The goal is really skill transfer,” Kurose said.
The experts “come for six months to two years, but they are not supposed to stay,” he added.
The Douai plant should be ready to operate under its own power by the end of 2026, he estimated.
One of the Chinese engineers also expressed his confidence.
“I must say that my French colleagues always work hard,” says He Xiaoming (36).
If they acquire the necessary knowledge and additional experience, “they will move quite quickly,” he added.
– Chinese partner –
The nearby ACC factory, the first battery giant to open in France in 2024, is also scaling up production after a difficult start.
“What we produce in one day took us a month at the beginning of the year,” says Yann Vincent, CEO of ACC.
“We are not yet where we want to be,” but in terms of the number of defective cells and volumes “we have made significant improvement.”
ACC, a joint venture of carmakers Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz plus energy company TotalEnergies, entered into a temporary partnership with a Chinese battery manufacturer earlier this year.
The company, whose name ACC is not disclosing, will manage one of its three production lines from A to Z until mid-2026.
Vincent said the Chinese have learned a huge amount from electric vehicle battery production in 20 years, while France started from scratch five years ago.
So “it’s better to rely on the people who know best” to speed up learning a “really delicate” manufacturing process.
ACC, which currently employs 1,200 people at its Billy-Berclau plant, aims to produce batteries for 250,000 electric vehicles next year, up from 10,000 so far.
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