Around 1.8 million BEVs were produced in Europe in 2024 (including the EU, UK, EFTA and Serbia, T&E calculations), very close to those sold in the same year (2 million). Germany leads the way with 1.2 million BEVs produced, followed by France with 330,000. Based on the current EU regulation on car CO2 standards, the compliance is expected to require 9.6 million in 2030 (replacing ICE manufacturing). Hence, although considerable production capacity already exists, significant expansion must occur to avoid losing market share to imports, as companies producing abroad capture the market opportunity.
To gauge the true scale and maturity of the electric-vehicle manufacturing transition, T&E investigated the status of the newest EV production projects announced by domestic and foreign carmakers in Europe (in addition to the existing EV facilities operating today). The new pool looked at here includes all the publicly announced investments for brand new factories or upgrading of existing ones, leaving out those that have already been fully realised, as well as those gradual upgrades that were not officially announced.
Looking at new EV projects expected to come online explains why Germany has zero projects in the map below e.g., as EV production ramp-up in the country has already started and no new plants are expected in the next few years. This allows us to assess the potential new capacity to produce EVs, as well as the associated investment and job creation, under different future outlooks.
Out of the thirteen new projects in scope here, five consist of greenfield plants, while the remaining eight involve the repurposing of existing assembly lines. If all these projects come to life, Europe will increase its existing capacity by at least 2.1 million electric vehicles annually, potentially bringing total production to 5.1 million units already in 2027, enough to keep up with the rising demand. This would come on top of the roughly 1.8 million EVs produced across Europe in 2024. Note that some projects do not distinguish between purely battery-electric and hybrid vehicles, so these figures might still include some plug-in hybrid (PHEV) production.
However, some projects in the list risk being delayed or even cancelled due to the uncertainty around future market perspectives. Whether these will move on or not depends on many factors, including the policy environment (EV market, industrial measures, etc), which currently lacks regulatory certainty and comprehensiveness. This of course does not mean that the existing EV facilities are completely safe, as a lack of an EV market and industrial policy can similarly mean they too will have to ramp down or even close.
T&E evaluated all thirteen new projects against four critical criteria: project status (delayed, started or in testing), construction status (not started, underway or completed), site location definition (yes/no), and public funding commitment (yes/no). Based on these criteria, the projects were classified into three risk categories – low, medium and high risk – reflecting whether the investment is at risk or likely to be completed.
The low-risk cohort comprises five projects that have secured final investment decisions, are either under construction or completed, and are set to start production in 2025, including two brand new plants: BMW in Hungary and Volvo in Slovakia. Stellantis (Serbia), Volkswagen and Chery (Spain) are instead converting existing facilities to expand their BEV production against old polluting vehicles.
Together, they will deliver 550,000 EVs per year and require around €4.8 billion of investment, creating at least 5,550 jobs. These flagship facilities demonstrate that, where regulatory certainty exists, industry is ready to mobilise large-scale production at pace: all these projects were announced in 2022 or earlier, before the current pushback against the EU 2035 car CO2 regulation.
