Germany's automaking lobby warned of difficult discussions with the European Commission to reshape incoming trade rules between the U.K. and the European Union that threaten to make electric vehicles more expensive.
From next year, 45 percent of an electric vehicle’s value must be sourced in the U.K. or elsewhere in Europe to avoid export tariffs of 10 percent.
The industry will not be ready to meet this threshold because Europe's battery supply chain is still ramping up, according to the VDA lobby, which represents German automakers including Volkswagen and BMW.
"We don't have enough batteries here to fulfill these rules," VDA President Hildegard Mueller said on Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "We are having difficult talks and we are working to inform about the consequences."