PARIS (Reuters) – ProLogium Technology plans to gradually expand a factory the Taiwanese battery maker plans to build in France to improve efficiency and respond to slowing sales of electric vehicles, its chief executive told Reuters.
ProLogium, which counts Mercedes-Benz among its investors, is banking on its next-generation technology to attract carmakers despite the market slowdown, with sales of new electric vehicles in the EU down 12% in May.
“We don’t want to grow too quickly,” Chief Executive Vincent Yang said in an interview at the World Materials Forum in Paris. “That will depend on the carmakers.”
The giant ProLogium factory, which is planned to be built in Dunkirk (North) for 5.2 million euros and which benefits from an investment from the French government, is still due to start production in 2027, added Vincent Yang.
The final capacity of the Dunkirk plant is expected to be 48 gigawatt hours (GWh), but it will start with 2-4 GWh and will likely increase to 8-16 GWh by 2030, he said.
In addition to assessing orders from automakers, ProLogium will improve the plant’s efficiency, with four successive versions of the battery to be rolled out by 2032, when full capacity is expected to be reached, he said.
(Report by Eric Onstad, with contributions from Gilles Guillaume, by Augustin Turpin, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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