France rolls out the red carpet for EV battery factories
For French President Emmanuel Macron, it was a light-bulb moment. In an ornate ballroom at the Palace of Versailles last July, the head of Taiwan's ProLogium took out a pair of scissors and cut one of its solid-state batteries the size of a credit card in half. The small bulb it was powering continued to shine. Macron was amazed by the demonstration of the safety and durability of the next-generation technology many carmakers hope will soon power electric vehicles (EVs), according to two people at the meeting. "We'll make your life easier and help you set up shop here," he told ProLogium's Chief Executive Vincent Yang. Ten months later, Macron and Yang stood side-by-side in Dunkirk to announce that ProLogium had picked the northern French port ahead of sites in Germany and the Netherlands for its first EV battery gigafactory outside Taiwan. It is one of four such gigafactories Macron hopes will transform the poor, former coal mining area near Belgium into a ...