Europe is sometimes — often, even — chided for its slow decision-making, which is seen by many as a product of being a “Club of 27” and the need to gain consensus for coordinated action. But a recent FT article describes an impressively fast response to Europe’s realization that it is being left behind in the lithium battery industry and, by extension, the wider Electric Vehicle (EV) market. The EU car industry had assumed up to a couple years ago that batteries would become a commodity and were low on the list of priorities in developing a competitive domestic EV industry. But although carmakers have invested billions in developing models and technologies around EV automobiles, the European car market remains almost totally reliant on imports for batteries despite the fact that nearly 40 percent of the vehicle value is said by the FT to be the batteries. For an […]