PARIS : France beat out competition from Germany and the Netherlands for ProLogium's first overseas car battery plant with lobbying from President Emmanuel Macron, deal sweeteners and competitive power prices, executives from the Taiwanese company said.
Europe currently largely depends on batteries made in Asia for electric cars, and national leaders are offering various incentives to kick start the industry. Gilles Normand, ProLogium executive vice-president, said that after Macron, a former investment banker, pitched Yang more than a year ago Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire followed up and helped make the company's case with the European Commission for EU financial incentives.
ProLogium expects the project to create 3,000 jobs directly and four times as much indirectly, a boon in a region where both the far right and far left score high after years of industrial decline. Normand added that the government sweetened the deal with an incentives package, but could not give details while further subsidies were under review at the European Commission.