Europe pours €200bn into EV race to break China's battery grip

European Economic Area nations and Switzerland have committed nearly €200bn to building out the continent's electric vehicle ecosystem, fresh data shows, underlining the scale of the bloc's effort to wrestle battery supremacy back from China and shore up its strategic autonomy.

The figures, published on 11 May by research group New Automotive, capture investments stretching across the battery supply chain, manufacturing plants and charging infrastructure. Some €109bn has been funnelled into battery production alone, with a further €60bn earmarked for EV assembly and conversion and between €23bn and €46bn for public charging networks, where more than 1 million chargepoints have already been installed.

The disclosures coincide with mounting anxiety in Brussels over the bloc's technological dependence on Beijing for clean energy hardware. The International Energy Agency estimates that Chinese plants produced more than 80 per cent of the world's batteries in 2025, including units consumed beyond the automotive sector. New Automotive said European facilities now supply batteries for roughly one in three EVs sold domestically, with announced capacity sufficient to meet future demand if fully built out.

Germany, Italy and several Central and Eastern European states account for more than half of the tracked spending, according to the report, with France and Spain emerging as further major beneficiaries. The geographical concentration mirrors the political fault lines exposed in December, when the European Commission proposed unwinding its effective 2035 ban on combustion-engine sales after intense lobbying from carmakers including Volkswagen, Stellantis and BMW.

That retreat, the bloc's most significant climb-down on green policy in years, has left investors weighing whether further softening of EV mandates could imperil returns on the multi-billion-euro capacity already under construction across the continent. With consumer demand growth slowing and Chinese imports gaining share, the data underscores how much rests on Brussels holding its industrial line over the coming decade.