Chapter 609

Just on the sixth day of the report meeting, the EU passed the "Battery Law," restricting the export of gallium, germanium, lithium processing, and other technologies, and at the same time requiring Xia Nation enterprises to provide carbon footprint data.

Citing the "Wassenaar Arrangement," it prohibits the transfer of core solid-state battery processes to China.

Carbon footprint data means that Xia Nation enterprises must provide data for every link from raw material mining, production, and transportation to recycling.

And the United States promulgated the "Inflation Reduction Act" the day before, which just happened to form a technical alliance with the EU's "Battery Law," restricting Xia Nation's supply chain.

It only took a few days to come up with a combination punch of "market protection + technical containment."

Xu Qingzhou roughly looked at the news and lost interest, focusing on the exchanges at the report meeting.

Naturally, European media would not let go of such a major event.

Sure enough, that evening, a piece of news from Agence France-Presse, "US and Europe join forces to break through solid-state battery technology, ending Xia Nation's lithium battery hegemony," made it to the trending list.

The news interpreted the Max Planck Institute's technical breakthrough in detail.

November 7th, noon, European Commission office.

The middle-aged man nodded with satisfaction, looked at the assistant who had just come in, and asked: "What is the reaction from Xia Nation?"

"The official side is the same as always, expressing things like win-win cooperation. On the civilian side, according to the news coming from there, they have been holding closed-door meetings these past few days, and the chaos we expected has not appeared."

"Wait a few more days."

European Commission Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson.

"Mr. Simson, this is your itinerary for today."

The assistant nodded and handed over the tablet.

An interview with the "Financial Times."

There is also a banquet with representatives of European battery enterprises and car companies in the evening.

"People from Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz want to see you."

"This group of Germans still opposes my containment policy?"

German car companies' sales in Xia Nation account for more than 30% of their global revenue; once they are countered, they will inevitably suffer heavy losses. Therefore, Germany basically maintains opposition to the EU's plan.

"A bunch of short-sighted things."

Simson cursed in a low voice, thought for a moment, and said: "Compared to listening to them nag, I would rather go to the golf course to hit a few balls."

"I will tell them that you have important official business in the afternoon and don't have time to meet."

The assistant said with a smile.

At the same time, night had already shrouded the land on the Xia Nation side.

CATL.

Chen Rongxuan had just ended his visit to the Kyoto Institute of Materials and was meeting with CEO Bai Mingzhe and others in the office.

"CATL's market value evaporates by 100 billion, Xia Nation's battery empire faces collapse."

Looking at this foreign news, Chen Rongxuan shook his head, put down his phone, and his tone was extremely emotional: "Fortunately, the Kyoto Institute of Materials made up for the technical defects, otherwise it might really have let this group of foreigners succeed."

Zhang Xiaofeng, who is in charge of the market, said: "Actually, no matter what, Europe and the US cannot reverse the technical generation gap in the short term. After all, Xia Nation currently occupies 50% of the global battery production capacity; for them to rebuild the supply chain, it will take at least 5 years and hundreds of billions in investment."

"Cannot be taken lightly. Europe and the US still have a very deep technical foundation. Personally, I think we should still increase investment in solid-state batteries." Chen Rongxuan sighed.

CEO Bai Mingzhe nodded and said: "It is necessary to step up the layout; it looks like the solid-state battery era will come sooner."

"When will the Kyoto Institute of Materials announce the results?"

"They are still doing technical summaries; it will take at least 3 days."

November 7th, accompanied by a grand and lively banquet, the seven-day Frontier Physics Report Meeting ended.

Suite.

Xu Qingzhou threw his suit on the bed and leaned on the sofa to rest. He had been running continuously for 7 days; although he learned quite a few things, he was also truly tired. Now that he lay down, he didn't want to move anymore.

The plane ticket had already been bought, for the flight at 3:30 PM tomorrow.