Europe is facing a boom in battery cell production for electric cars - and Germany will be by far the most important center of this future industry.
This is forecast by the experts from the Brussels climate protection association Transport & Environment (T&E) in a new market analysis available to the FAZ.
The battery cell is a key component in the fast-growing market for electric cars: around 40 percent of the total added value in the manufacture of battery-electric vehicles is attributable to the battery.
Marcus Theurer
Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
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So far, European manufacturers have been almost entirely dependent on deliveries from Asian battery cell factories.
That could now change faster than previously assumed: T&E predicts that Europe will already have enough domestic production capacities for battery cells this year to meet its needs.
According to the traffic experts, 22 large factories for the production of battery cells ("gigafactories") are currently planned in Europe.
Some of these are already under construction.
This would create around 100,000 new jobs by 2030, which could at least partially offset expected job losses in the manufacture of conventional cars with internal combustion engines.
A number of locations are planned in Germany - including the new Tesla factory in Brandenburg, the Volkswagen and Northvolt factory in Salzgitter and another at Opel in Kaiserslautern.
Asian manufacturers are also building new factories in Europe.
For example, the Chinese companies CATL and SVolt want to manufacture batteries for the European market in Thuringia and Saarland.
The manufacturers are converting
Transport & Environment estimates that the investment offensive will increase the production capacity for battery cells in Europe almost tenfold by the middle of the decade: in 2020 it was 49 gigawatt hours, in 2025 it could reach 460 gigawatt hours, which is enough for an annual production of around eight million electric cars would.
Around half of this is expected to come from German factories.
This will make Germany the clearly dominant location for battery cell production in Europe - ahead of Poland, Hungary, Norway, Sweden and France.
If the experts are correct with their prognosis, the establishment of a battery cell industry in Europe will succeed faster than the EU has so far targeted.
The European confederation and the member states are mobilizing billions in aid to catch up with Asian countries in the production of important electricity storage systems.
Last year, the sale of electric cars rose sharply against the trend, not least thanks to government purchase premiums.
Germany is now the second largest market for electric cars in the world after China.
In 2020, sales in this country jumped 260 percent.
Every seventh new car registered in Germany had an electric or partially electric drive.
The best-selling electric car in the world is the Tesla Model 3.
The auto industry is now relying more and more on electric drives.
Ford has announced that it will no longer offer cars with internal combustion engines in Europe from 2030.
Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover also want to retire the combustion engine.
The Stuttgart manufacturer Porsche expects that by the end of the decade more than 80 percent of its sports car sales will be electric cars.
Daimler CEO Ola Källenius, on the other hand, is more cautious: the company will not take the combustion engines “prematurely” out of the program because they can still earn a lot of money, he said recently.
The T&E association is the umbrella organization of around 60 environmental protection associations in Europe with a transport policy focus.
T&E is supported by various foundations and non-governmental organizations, including the Word Wildlife Fund (WWF).