EU Battery Alliance: Will Airbus-style Consortia Make Europe a Battery Tycoon?
European Union (EU) sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are set to boom from 126 thousand in 2017 to 200 thousand this year. While this is obviously good news, what worries Brussels is that more than half of the batteries that power them are being made in China. Keen not to lose out in the fast rising industry, the EU set to join the global race for battery cell production and invite the auto, chemical, and engineering executives to the newly launched (October 11, 2017) EU Battery Alliance, by many also called the “Airbus of batteries.”
According to the EU executives, the market for batteries could reach EUR 250 billion annually as promptly as in 2025. Europe’s share of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) demand is expected to amount to 200 GWh (and 600 GWh globally), thus the lack of a domestic EU’s cell manufacturing base is seen as a weakness by the European Commission (EC), which during the second meeting of the Alliance (February 12, 2018) urged EU industry to act fast – and collectively – to overcome what it sees as a competitive disadvantage.
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