Automobile. At Étaples, Valeo manufactures the hybrid at low cost

The president of the Republic has chosen the Valeo factory in Etaples (Pas-de-Calais) to present this Tuesday, May 26, the auto plan which should make it possible to revive the sector. The supplier shows the way by producing the alternators that equip one in three cars in Europe.

A factory where production is mainly a matter of robots

It is not because the Valeo factory in Étaples is close to his vacation home in Le Touquet that Emmanuel Macron chose it to announce his car plan, but because it symbolizes the future of the future.self that he wants to see happen in France.

Here, production is above all a matter of robots (half of the employees are engineers or technicians). They quickly assemble the 48-volt alternators that could help win the CO2 battle.

The alternator is the complex piece of steel, copper and rare metals that converts engine energy into electricity. The 48-volt alternators inherited from the 12 volts that Etaples has been manufacturing for a long time (it equips a third of cars in Europe) put a touch of hybrid in the engines.

Just a little touch, because we are well below hybrid engines not to mention plug-in hybrids, but it is three times cheaper. And the few grams of CO2 that engine engines no longer produce will reduce the fines provided by the European Union for manufacturers that exceed 95 g per km traveled (59 g in 2030).

An alternator capable of driving the Citroën Friend

It is also at Étaples that the 48V electric motor (against 400 volts for a normal electric car) is designed for the new Citroën micro-city car Friend. With 75 km of autonomy, the distant electric descendant of theFriend 8 will only be able to drive in the city, but it will be cheaper for a vehicle powered only by the electric alternator.

If the Etaples factory is one of Valeo’s most automated sites (its director says manufacture cheaper than in low cost countries ), it still hired 100 people last year. Valeo claims first place in the world for 48-volt light hybridization with 40% of the market.

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