Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz pause gigafactory plans as electric car sales slide

ACC’s €7bn (£6bn) gigafactory plan involved constructing sites in Kaiserslautern, south-west Germany; Termoli, on Italy’s southern Adriatic coast; and a location in France.

It planned to employ 2,000 people at each site, bringing the company’s total headcount to 8,000 people.

ACC has now reportedly decided to review its strategy for the Kaiserslautern site, which was supposed to become operational in 2025 and reach full capacity in 2030.

Yann Vincent, chief executive of ACC, said one of the proposals includes making cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate battery cells.

The Kaiserslautern factory will be ACC’s second gigafactory after opening its first in France’s so-called “battery valley” in the Billy-Berclau Douvrin region last year.

ACC will revisit plans for its Termoli gigafactory in late 2024 or early 2025, as reported by German newspaper Rheinpfalz.

Meanwhile, new data show that only 116,100 new Chinese-branded cars were registered across Western Europe in the first four months of 2024, accounting for just 2.9pc of the new vehicle market.

This was down slightly from their 3pc share during the same period a year earlier, according to analysis by consultancy firm Schmidt Automotive.