Battery shortage at ACC likely to impact Stellantis production
According to Bloomberg, which claims to have obtained information from informed sources, supply issues at the French battery cell factory are expected to cause delays for some electric models. ACC is currently able to equip only around 1,000 vehicles per month with its batteries, which is far below the original target, the news agency reports, citing its sources. ACC has reportedly brought in a team of experts from China to boost production and reduce high scrap rates.
ACC did not directly comment on this figure but acknowledged general challenges. “The ramp-up is difficult but we are learning every day and doing as much as possible to service our clients,” ACC Secretary-General Matthieu Hubert told Bloomberg. However, he declined to provide further details. Stellantis did not respond to Bloomberg’s enquiry.
Delivery delays of up to eight months
Stellantis uses battery cells from the ACC factory in Douvrin in electric vehicles based on the group’s STLA Medium platform. Bloomberg cites the Peugeot E-3008 and E-5008 as examples. The platform’s sister models, the Opel Grandland Electric and the DS N°8, also rely on ACC battery cells. Bloomberg reports that vehicles using ACC cells are facing delivery delays of up to eight months.
Signs that operations at the Douvrin factory were not running smoothly had already emerged. In November 2025, the Italian portal Milano Finanza reported scrap rates of between 15 and 20 per cent, leading to a reduced capacity for delivering battery packs to Stellantis, the sole current customer of ACC. “According to internal data, the plant will be able to deliver no more than 15,000 to 20,000 battery packs in the last four months of the year, a level far below expectations, while production costs are 20 to 25 per cent higher than those of Asian competitors,” the report stated at the time.
In light of the issues at the ACC factory, which opened in 2023, Bloomberg draws a parallel with developments at Northvolt. The Swedish company had also started producing battery cells after billions in investments and delivered them to customers. However, Northvolt struggled with high scrap rates and costs during the production ramp-up, and ultimately filed for insolvency after a failed financing round, despite having existing orders.
Stellantis is not only ACC’s sole current customer but also its main shareholder. Other shareholders include Mercedes-Benz and the French energy group TotalEnergies, through its subsidiary Saft. ACC has already put its planned factories in Kaiserslautern and Termoli on hold, while TotalEnergies has questioned further investments. Meanwhile, Stellantis’ new CEO, Antonio Filosa, is internally reviewing many electric models—though primarily in the USA so far. In Europe, Stellantis is now looking beyond its ACC stake to other partners and is building a battery factory for LFP cells in Spain together with CATL.
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