Europe Can Build Enough Cells After All, Says T&E. Asian Firms Own 85% of the Factories.

Four days ago this site reported that Europe cannot build enough battery cells to satisfy its own "Made in EU" rule. That finding came from a study commissioned by ACEA, the carmakers' lobby. On 1 October 2026 the other side published its answer.

Transport & Environment's analysis, Ready to Scale, concludes that the EU will have enough locally made cells by 2030 to cover every electric car the Industrial Accelerator Act's local-content rules would touch. It lands while negotiations on the Act are at their sharpest point, and it contradicts the ACEA-commissioned finding that around three million cars would fail to qualify.

Two studies, two answers

The scope matters. The rules apply to light-duty EVs including vans, and only to corporate cars and private cars bought with public support — not to every car sold. T&E's "enough" is measured against that narrower pool, which is part of why the two studies can read the same industry and disagree.

T&E's sequencing is specific: by 2027 European output could fully supply subsidised company cars plus a significant share of subsidised private ones, and by 2030 both — provided projects it rates as medium-confidence actually get built. That conditional is doing real work.

The part neither lobby leads with

More than 85% of active European cell capacity belongs to companies that are not European. South Korean manufacturers alone account for 72% of production: LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI and SK On, operating mainly in Poland and Hungary. CATL runs plants in Arnstadt, Germany and Debrecen, Hungary.

That figure is lower than the one this site reported in August, when Deloitte put Asian control of European cell capacity at 98%. The two are not measuring quite the same thing — T&E counts ownership of capacity that is actually running, Deloitte counted control across the European capacity base — but the gap is wider than the definitions explain, and no one has reconciled them.

This is not a loophole. The draft rule counts where a cell is produced, not who owns the factory, so a Korean-owned plant in Poland makes "Made in EU" cells. The practical effect is that a European localisation rule would be met largely by Asian firms' European factories, and would hand a guaranteed market to Hungary, Poland and Slovakia at a moment when Chinese cell imports enter the EU at close to no tariff.

T&E puts the demand effect at up to 34% additional EU battery demand in 2027 against the current baseline, if cells and cathode active material are both covered.

Where it genuinely does not add up

Both studies agree on the materials layer, and that agreement is the more reliable finding. Of 529,000 tonnes a year of announced cathode active material capacity, T&E's weighting expects about 177,000 by 2030. For precursor CAM the figure is 217.9 GWh-equivalent against 552.6 announced. China holds roughly 90% of global CAM and pCAM capacity and about 95% of LFP capacity. T&E's recommendation is minimum quotas on pCAM and anode material from 2032 rather than earlier.

What it means for a European Tesla buyer

Tesla is among the few volume carmakers already preparing to make cells inside the EU: 4680 production at Grünheide is due in the first half of 2027, with an 18 GWh target. Against a rule that counts production location, that timing matters more than the badge — today a Berlin-built Model Y runs on LFP from China, NCM from LG and 4680s from Texas, and Tesla's in-house cathode work is in Texas, not Europe.

Neither study is neutral. ACEA's members want softer targets; T&E wants the rule to hold. Both are forecasts. What is not in dispute is that whether a car qualifies for European public money at the end of this decade will be decided by where its cell was made.