Shooting the breeze on ADO, page-4802

other gigafactory in same region
I understand there are 4 different companies building Giga factories at present in that part of France

Northern France to Host €2b EV Battery Gigafactory June 29, 2021 Anne-Françoise Pelé
Electric vehicles (EVs) are hitting the world’s roads, and millions more are coming. To serve the exponential demand, a €2 billion EV battery gigafactory will be built in Douai, in northern France. French president Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Monday (June 28th 21) that Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC), a former Nissan subsidiary acquired in 2018 by China’s Envision, will invest €2 billion to build a battery cell production site next to the Renault Group factory in Douai.
The French government will also invest €200 million in the project. The gigafactory, whose construction will take place between 2022 and 2024, is set to produce 9 GWh per year and will mainly supply the Renault Group from 2024. It could increase its capacity to reach an annual production of 24 GWh in 2030. “Investing to build a new gigafactory in northern France, we aim to support the net zero carbon transition by making high performance, longer range batteries and EVs affordable and accessible for millions more motorists,” commented Lei Zhang, founder and CEO of Envision Group, in a statement. “This first phase development will unlock future large-scale investment to grow the local supply chain and develop the whole life cycle opportunities of batteries, including energy storage, battery reuse, smart charging, and closed loop recycling. It has the potential to create thousands of new high value green jobs as part of an end-to-end battery ecosystem in the region.” The gigafactory is expected to employ 1,000 people initially, but “there is the potential to go up to 2,500 jobs by 2030,” according to the French president’s office.
This is the second electric battery gigafactory in the Hauts-de-France region. In September 2020, Total, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Saft, and Stellantis (ex-Groupe PSA) with Opel sealed an agreement for the creation of Automotive Cell Company (AAC), a joint venture that targets the production of batteries for one million EVs per year by 2030. The project is partitioned into phases. The first phase of the project focuses on R&D, with the setting up of a pilot plant at Saft’s facility in Nersac, in the French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The pilot plant represents an investment of €200 million and is expected to be operational by mid-2021. The second phase is the creation of the large-scale production plant of 9 GWh initially, rising to 16 GWh and then to 24 GWh, in the northern Hauts-de-France region. A second plant of equal capacity is also planned in Germany in order to reach 48GWh of combined capacity by 2030. Eventually, the manufacturing capacity should reach one million batteries per year, about 10 to 15% of the European market. The project, supported by nearly €1.3 million in public funding from the European Union, would require a total of €5 billion in investments, Total and Stellantis said. In parallel with its agreement with Envision, Renault announced it has signed a partnership agreement and taken a 20% stake in the Grenoble-based startup Verkor to codevelop high-performance batteries.Electrification trendsWith mounting concern over the environment and ever-stringent emissions regulations, EVs are seen as an alternative form of transportation. There were 10 million electric cars on the world’s roads at the end of 2020, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency. Electric car registrations increased by 41% in 2020, despite the global slowdown in car sales during the pandemic. About 3 million electric cars were sold worldwide (a 4.6% share of sales), and Europe surpassed the People’s Republic of China as the world’s largest EV market for the first time. According to the IEA’s Global Electric Vehicle Outlook, the number of electric cars, buses, vans and heavy trucks on roads will reach 145 million by 2030, accounting for 7% of the road vehicle fleet.While Europe and North America have accelerated the pace, China remains by far the most aggressive country in building lithium ion cell production capacity to support its EV and energy storage industries.In 2021, “148 of the world’s 200 lithium ion battery megafactories in the pipeline are located in China, whereas Europe and North America have only 21 and 11 megafactories in the pipeline”, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. In view of upcoming projects, Europe’s capacity is set to expand fast.