AS electric car sales soar, Europe has started to build up its capacity to produce batteries on the continent but it remains far from reducing its dependence on Asia. China, Japan and South Korea produce most of the world’s electric car batteries. Europe now has projects to build 38 gigafactories with a combined annual output of 1,000 gigawatt hours and an estimated cost of 40 billion euros ($48 billion), according to a June report by Transport & Environment, a nongovernment organization. This annual supply could be reached by 2029 to 2030 and would be the equivalent to the production of 16.7 million battery electric vehicles.