At the bend of a bend, on the bucolic road which crosses the Norman bocage, the factory bursts into the landscape: vast, lively, stretching its buildings on either side of the departmental road. Great thing incongruous in this green countryside. Here is the visitor arrived at one of the most surprising sites of the French automobile industry: the nerve center of Acome, precisely in Romagny-Fontenay, a small town next to the large town of Mortain-Bocage, in the Manche department.
An atypical equipment supplier if there is one, Acome, a nearly century-old company, is a cooperative specializing in high-tech cabling. It is trying to find a place in the growing market of an increasingly electric, connected car. And therefore more and more connected. “Here we are creating the nervous system of the automobile of tomorrow, summarizes Aurélien Bergonzo, Director of Research and Development (R&D) at Acome. Cars are becoming, even more than smartphones on wheels, mobile data centers. “
The amount of wires, cords and other cables carrying either electric current or information has dropped from 1.5 km per vehicle to 3 km today, and promises to reach 4 km within five years. . That’s good news, Acome, a large SME with 2,000 employees, has been manufacturing cable since 1932. While telecommunications represent the majority (50% in 2020) of its turnover, the automobile sector is its second largest supplier of orders (40% sales in normal times, a little less in 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic).
“More innovation than one imagines”
Among Acome’s end customers are big names in the auto industry: the French Renault and Stellantis, the Americans Ford and General Motors, the Chinese Geely and BYD, which are very active in electric vehicles. And then, it’s a bit the pride of the moment, Tesla seems to particularly appreciate one of Acome’s latest innovations, a cabling without insulating silicone for high power current (400 to 800 volts), characterized by its great flexibility (therefore practical to stay in the constrained space that is a car), by its thermal performance and its cost price. “Things are going strong at Tesla” says Philippe Rossier, technical director for the automotive sector.
Return to Mortain. The factory, or rather the factories (there are six on 43 hectares, employing 1,000 people) is also, with 100 employed researchers, the group’s R&D center. “Cable is much more technology and innovation than we imagine”, explains Jacques de Heere, CEO of Acome. This science of wiring can be found in the wire drawing industry, where we will stretch large copper wires almost to infinity (a 4 km coil turns into 8 700 km coils) with diamond tools including the precision is of the order of a micron. It is also found in the final workshop, where the wire is “stranded”, that is to say braided at the right level of flexibility and conductivity, then covered with polymer and insulated.
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