GENEVA (Reuters) – European carmakers and energy suppliers need to collaborate more to catch up with China in terms of the size of its electric vehicle (EV) sector, Renault boss Luca de Meo said on Tuesday.
There is space for collaboration within Europe for most manufacturers, especially in the upstream part of the EV value chain such as sourcing of minerals and production, de Meo said during a press conference on the sidelines of the Geneva International Motor Show.
Europe lags China in terms of access to materials, their refining and gigafactory capacity, he said, and “to create the power and the scale that China has achieved on EVs,” it has to do more.
De Meo also urged EU authorities and governments to push energy providers and car makers to collaborate to help speed up deployment of charging infrastructure, and use EVs to store energy for the grid, as they can act as energy suppliers when needed.
“Europe is a very fragmented landscape, which makes the beauty of it,” but also slows it in terms of some kinds of transitions, he said.
(Reporting by Gilles Guillaume, writing by Piotr Lipinski, Editing by Dominique Vidalon and Bernadette Baum)
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