One in eight electric cars charging in Europe already carries a Chinese badge, while many European brands still rely on Chinese-made batteries. The challenge is no longer scientific but industrial, as research and innovation seek to prevent Europe's energy transition from creating a new strategic dependence.

Look at the cars in a traffic jam in Europe today. Around two out of every ten new vehicles rolling off the forecourt are battery electric. In some months of 2026, that share already touched 22%. The shift is real, and it is accelerating. What is less visible — and far more consequential — is what powers those vehicles, and where it comes from.

Pull into a charging station and look more carefully at the queue. In November 2025, Chinese manufacturers captured a record 12.8% of Europe's electric vehicle sales — meaning that, among the cars plugging in, roughly one in eight already carries a Chinese badge. BYD, SAIC, Chery: brands that barely registered on European roads three years ago are now a visible, and growing, presence at every charging point.

The Chinese badge, however, is only the most visible part of the story. Look under the bonnet of a Volkswagen, a BMW or a Stellantis electric vehicle, and the picture is similar. BMW relies on three Chinese manufacturers — SVOLT, CATL and EVE Energy — for battery supply, with Chinese cell content estimated to reach above 60% of its global battery volume by 2027. Stellantis and Volkswagen have gone further, forming joint ventures and ownership stakes with Chinese battery giants. LFP cells used in European EV production are currently being imported from China. The European badge on the car does not mean the battery inside was made in Europe. In most cases, it was not. In 2025, China accounted for over 80% of global battery cell production, and nearly 60% of all electric vehicles imported into the EU came from Chinese factories. BYD alone more than doubled its EU registrations in the first four months of 2026, growing by over 150% year on year.

"The challenge is not a technology gap," says Patrick Plötz, Head of the Department of Energy Technology and Energy Systems at Fraunhofer ISI. "The key gap is ultimately a systems and governance gap: fragmented investment, uncertain policy frameworks and insufficient coordination across the value chain." Europe has strong battery research and innovative companies, he argues. What it has lacked is what China combined early and at scale: industrial policy, market creation and manufacturing capacity, working in concert. "It takes time to catch up," he adds. "And that time is not unlimited."

It is against this backdrop that the EUSEW session "Competitive by Design", held in Brussels on 10 June 2026, brought together industry leaders, EU institutions, and Horizon-funded projects for a candid exchange. The discussion was anchored by a pointed observation from Bozorg Khanbaei, Executive Director of Batteries European Partnership Association (BEPA): "You cannot make cheap batteries if you do not know how to make batteries; but if you do know how to make them, then you can make cheap ones too." The argument for building European gigafactories, he stressed, is ultimately an argument for acquiring and retaining industrial knowledge — knowledge that cannot be built in isolation. "It requires an ecosystem where manufacturing, research, recycling and policy reinforce one another. Investing in one pillar without the others leaves the whole structure exposed."

That ecosystem logic plays out in projects like NEMO, an EU-funded initiative developing next-generation battery management systems. As Jasmin Jabbarpour, Battery Innovation Projects Lead at Icons Innovation Strategies and Project Management Officer for NEMO, explains: "This is an ambitious project which seeks to advance battery management systems — one of the core components of battery technology. It aims to be at the forefront of this innovation, extending battery life, making batteries safer and enabling second-life use." But the gap between a promising research output and an industrially deployable product, she notes, is where European innovation most often stalls. "Sometimes battery innovation projects are struggling to pass from research to industrial deployment. Having strong pilots shows whether there is industrial potential — but that is not enough on its own. The market also needs to be ready to receive and scale these innovations."

The technical dimensions of that gap are precise and demanding. Norbert Sailer, researcher at Infineon Technologies and NEMO partner, describes what deploying electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) — the diagnostic technology at the core of this European initiative — actually requires outside a controlled lab environment. "In a real battery pack, algorithms must be robust enough to distinguish between multiple simultaneously occurring effects — ageing, temperature, state-of-charge variations — rather than the controlled single-variable experiments typical in research," he explains. Traction inverters generate noise that overlaps with EIS measurement frequencies; scaling from a single cell to an 800-volt automotive pack requires substantial engineering investment. And even where the technology is ready, adoption depends on economics. "EIS-based diagnostics add system cost," Sailer notes. "Carmakers require clear value propositions: extended warranty confidence, second-life battery certification, reduced costs. Without a compelling business case, adoption lags despite technical readiness." NEMO has demonstrated proof-of-concept at module level. "In the near term," Sailer adds, "stationary energy storage offers the most promising pathway — the cost structure is more favourable than automotive."

Underlying all of this is a geopolitical question that the Brussels session addressed directly. As Europe accelerates its energy transition, does it risk replacing dependence on fossil fuels with a new dependence on foreign battery technologies and critical raw materials? Plötz argues the concern is real but structurally different from what came before. "Batteries require large upfront material inputs, but these materials can be recycled and reused, unlike oil or gas that must continuously be imported and burned." The deeper vulnerability, he says, is not raw material access per se. "The larger risk is dependence on processing capacity, refining and manufacturing know-how concentrated in Asia." The solution is not autarky but strategic resilience. "The biggest structural change would be creating long-term policy credibility for industrial scaling. Stable market signals, faster permitting and long-term investment certainty would probably do more to close the lab-to-market gap than isolated subsidy programmes alone."

Back to the charging queue. According to the IEA's Global EV Outlook 2026, one in three cars sold in Europe will already be electric this year. By 2030, Transport & Environment projects EVs could reach 30% of new car sales, with battery prices dropping over 30% — making electric cars price-competitive across all segments for the first time. The question is who generates that cost reduction: Chinese manufacturers, whose scale already gives them a structural lead, or Europe, building project by project the industrial knowledge to compete. The answer depends on decisions being taken now, in labs like NEMO's, in policy chambers and on factory floors that Europe is still, in many places, yet to build.