PARIS, June 21 — As electric car sales soar, Europe has started to build up its capacity to produce batteries on the continent but it remains far from reducing its dependence on Asia.Europe now has projects to build 38 gigafactories with a combined annual output of 1,000 gigawatt hours and an estimated cost of €40 billion euros , according to a June report by Transport & Environment, a non-government organisation.
“They will also have to ensure access to materials for the electrodes , which will determine the batteries’ price and availability,” he added. Automakers, which are under pressure to transition out of fossil fuel vehicles, are putting money into battery production.Stellantis, which owns brands such as Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroen, Dodge and Fiat, is working on two of its own, while electric pioneer Tesla wants to make its future gigafactory near Berlin one of the biggest in the world with 250 GWh of capacity by 2030.
Two South Korean companies, LG Chem and SKI, have already opened factories in Poland and Hungary, and China’s CATL is building one in Germany.European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic said in March that the continent needed to achieve strategic independence in what has become a critical sector.That is a tall order, according to Oliver Montique, an analyst with Fitch Solutions.
To develop a new generation of batteries that are less dependent on the lithium-ion technology dominated by Asian companies, the European Commission launched a research and development programme in January backed by €2.9 billion.