The aim by 2025 was an EU battery industry capable of powering at least six million electric cars, EU commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic, responsible for the bloc’s strategic futures planning.
The European Commission’s approval of €2.9 billion ($3.5 billion) in subsidies is the second such pan-European scheme, following €3.2 billion approved in 2019 across seven countries.
Last September, EU registrations of fully or partly electric vehicles — fully electric, plug-in hybrid or hybrid — overtook those of diesel registrations for the first time, according to the research firm JATO Dynamics, despite higher costs and lack of charging sites on road networks.