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VW postponed the battery plant in Europe.

 

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Volk­swa­gen is put­ting on hold a planned bat­tery plant in east­ern Europe and pri­or­it­ising a sim­ilar facil­ity in North Amer­ica after estim­at­ing that it could receive €10bn in US incent­ives. Europe’s largest car­maker told EU offi­cials last week that it expec­ted to reap €9bn-€10bn in sub­sidies and loans from the US pres­id­ent’s Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act and other US schemes over the site’s life­time, say people at the meet­ing. VW was «wait­ing» to see how the EU would respond to Wash­ing­ton’s incent­ives before press­ing ahead with a plan to build a plant in east­ern Europe, said one per­son with dir­ect know­ledge of the decision mak­ing at VW. «Plans in North Amer­ica have moved for­ward faster than expec­ted and over­taken decision­mak­ing in Europe,» the per­son said.

« When we put the fig­ures together, the con­di­tions they offer are much more inter­est­ing than the con­di­tions they offer in Europe». VW said no decisions had been made on the loc­a­tions of its plants in North Amer­ica or Europe, and it was com­mit­ted to its plan to build more cell factor­ies in Europe. VW is mak­ing «much faster pro­gress» with bat­tery fact­ory plans in North Amer­ica com­pared with Europe, Thomas Schmall, head of VW’s com­pon­ents unit, wrote on LinkedIn after attend­ing the meet­ing in Brus­sels. Europe was at risk of los­ing out on «bil­lions of invest­ments that will be decided in the com­ing months and years», he added.

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