Chinese EV Battery Manufacturing in Hungary:
Helping or Hingering the Green Transition?
Ágnes Szunomár
Oxford Energy Forum – Issue 144 – April 2025
2025 EVs and battery supply chains issues and impacts
By: The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies /OIES/, Anders Hove
Policymakers are pursuing EV adoption as the automotive technology of the future due to its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. In line with the EU climate goals, including the 2035 zero-emission targets, the EU is investing hundreds of billions of euros into electromobility: pushing car manufacturers to produce EVs, boosting sales of these vehicles, and supporting the installation of a million charging stations.
Although the EU has been investigating whether Chinese EV companies have benefited from illegal state subsidies, it is hard to imagine that the region’s ambitious EV strategy could be carried out without Chinese companies currently leading the EV industry—and, crucially, without the batteries produced by Chinese players. As a result, despite remaining tensions, Chinese EV
companies are gaining a foothold in European markets to sell EVs and to supply European EV manufacturers with locally manufactured EV batteries. Hungary—host to most of the Chinese EV battery projects in Europe—exemplifies the emerging role of China, and presents an exceptional case study for how Chinese firms, technologies, and supply chains help and hinder Europe’s
green transition.
Oxford Energy Forum – Issue 144 – April 2025
2025 EVs and battery supply chains issues and impacts
This issue of the Oxford Energy Forum is dedicated to the topic of global EV and battery supply chains, and specifically how countries are responding to the need to diversify EV supply chains away from China, while also navigating new geopolitical challenges, tariffs and trade barriers being erected by the Trump administration in the US. Among the common themes of the 13 articles in this Forum is industrial policy: countries not only are eager to capture part of the global EV value chain, but they are willing to consider industrial policies to achieve that end. In some cases, the primary consideration is to protect existing industries and enable countries to better compete with the rising tide of low-cost Chinese EVs. Developing-world countries also seek to ensure that the global EV revolution doesn’t simply become another import dependency. There are also several instances of countries that seek to use local mineral endowments to move into higher-value aspects of the battery supply chain. Above all, countries see the EV and battery sectors as ways to boost employment, move up the value chain, and upgrade technologically. Given the immediacy of the newly-introduced tariff regime in the US, two articles address the new situation confronting companies in the US, while two articles tackle various approaches in Mexico.
