HAMBURG, Germany -- Haunted by emission scandals and looming bans for diesel cars in German cities, Germany's automakers have been losing their rock-solid confidence in the future of combustion engines. But as they begin to shift toward electric cars, they are finding themselves completely reliant on Asian suppliers for lithium-ion batteries.
No German automaker or component supplier produces battery cells for electric vehicles, and none has concrete plans for doing so given the massive investment that creating homegrown production would entail.
