You are an EU commissioner & policymaker. The EU has already...

You are an EU commissioner & policymaker. The EU has already passed into law the end of new combustion engine car sales across the continent by 2035. You have most member state governments on board and have fleets of bureaucrats managing this massive economic transformation process. In response, European automakers - huge employers and economic (and political) contributors - have commenced retooling their plants, retraining staff, redesigning their entire manufacturing process and product lines, each investing tens of billions of € in the process.

But there is one major impediment: a shortage of domestically produced battery metals, especially lithium, at a price that keeps sales of the final EV product affordable for mass adoption.

So what do you do? Do you incinerate all of your political capital with a complete 180 degree turnaround on your legislated EV mandate, abandoning your years & years of clean energy & climate change policy, backflipping on the EU-wide renewables push, throwing industry into complete turmoil, alienating member states and their voters, and trashing your own agenda & personal reputation in the process?

Or do you throw everything you’ve got - including subsidies, investment directives, legislative & regulatory support - at a handful of ambitious domestic battery metals developers & producers to explore & exhaust every possible avenue to potentially (and at small coin comparative to what has already been spent by industry transforming themselves in preparation for an EV-only future) resolve the lithium shortage?

Any politician - and every career bureaucrat- will opt for the latter.

A couple of trolls here who are trying to infer that it is “all over” for EVs have absolutely no idea how politics works in Europe, in Australia, or anywhere.