It is a lot more complex than “Europe is actually following America more than China in this”.
Europe have very limited lithium deposits compared to China. Europe is trying to be as self sustaining as possible, especially now that the US have shown themselves to be a highly unreliable partner.
So exchanging one dependency for another is a poor lateral move at best.
You can’t just start digging up the entire ground and make car batteries out of all lithium you find.
European universities all over are researching alternative battery technology that doesn’t rely as much on lithium.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
None of that is true. There is lithium everywhere, Germany just found 45 million tonnes of it. People have been digging up the entire ground for oil for 200 years.
You can research all you want, but the periodic table is not changing, and Chinese R&D is decades ahead of the West.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 hour ago
Chinese Sodium-Ion Batteries enter the chat