Germany invests billion euros in German and European battery production

Spread the love

The German government has set aside 1 billion euros to support the large-scale production of battery cells in Germany and Europe. The intention is that the German car industry will become less dependent on Asian battery manufacturers.

Peter Altmaier, the German Minister of Economic Affairs, says that this investment should ultimately contribute to ensuring that by 2030 about 30 percent of the need for battery cells will be met by German or European manufacturers, Reuters reports. According to the minister, production should ‘start as soon as possible’. In the coming months, he wants to lay the foundation for the start-up of large-scale battery production in Europe. The first production in Germany is expected to start sometime in 2021.

Altmaier says that Germany is willing to cooperate with other European countries. The German government is said to be already in talks with France, Poland and Austria and talks are already underway with certain companies. According to the minister, there is interest from various parties in several battery production consortia. He thinks that 500 million euros per consortium is needed to start large-scale production. Each consortium is expected to create between 1000 and 2000 jobs.

It is not yet clear which companies are involved, although Reuters previously reported on the basis of sources that a consortium consisting of Varta Microbattery, BASF and Ford-Werke plans to produce battery cells in Germany. Volkswagen would be willing to join this consortium, partly because the battery company is now heavily dependent on Asian suppliers such as LG Chem and the Chinese Contemporary Amperex Technology. Herbert Diess, the director of the German car manufacturer Volkswagen, said earlier this year that he wanted to get rid of this dependence on Asian manufacturers.

The call from the German government to join forces in Europe in the field of battery production is not new. A year ago, Maroš Ŝefčovič, the European Commissioner for the Energy Union, already advocated the creation of a European consortium for the production of car batteries. He stated that Europe is lagging behind China and the US when it comes to electromobility. However, Volkswagen said at the time that it was not interested, because the batteries can be bought cheaply from abroad. However, the European Commissioner finds the technology too valuable to be imported alone. Ŝefčovič says the battery market could be worth 250 billion annually by 2025.

You might also like