
EU approves 3.2B euro state aid for battery research - ga-vu
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-batteries/eu-approves-3-2-billion-euro-state-aid-for-battery-research-idUSKBN1YD0WJ
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paganel
So I guess the big 3 Germans are over the "they laugh at you" phase and now
they're in full "they fight you" mode.

I think as recent as one year ago there still were German car executives that
were touting their hard-won experience of making cars for 50+ years, not
realizing that EVs are mostly batteries + accompanying software that happens
to have some wheels attached . Making excellent inline-six engines or quite
crazy V10 diesel engines has almost no connection to all that.

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pete762
The use cases for long lasting and energy dense batteries are much more
diversified than just cars.

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paganel
The "coincidence" between VW announcing that they'll go "all in" when it comes
to EVs and this EU announcement is too big, of course this is meant to help
the German (and partly the French) car manufacturers. When your industrial
output suffers the biggest blow since 2009 [1] you have to be seen doing
something (as a politician, I mean) in order not to let the bad people from
AfD get a hold on the reins of power.

[1]
[https://www.ft.com/content/a1a14220-1801-11ea-9ee4-11f260415...](https://www.ft.com/content/a1a14220-1801-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385)

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sam_lowry_
Don't know for others, but Solvay S.A seems to be getting a fair share of the
funds while being mostly a financial institution. It's been a few dozen years
since they operated actual production plants.

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londons_explore
State aid is notoriously hard to distribute in an 'efficient' manner (ie.
eventually providing a positive economic return on investment to the state).

The EU is IMO even worse than your average state at it. They throw a _lot_ of
money away.

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tonyedgecombe
The EU isn't funding it, the seven states involved are.

The EU has quite strict rules around state aid to stop a race to the bottom
amongst individual states. This ruling is making an exception to that.

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amelius
That's a bargain compared to what patented tech costs.

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pier25
Finally, some hope.

