Northvolt's shock decision this week to shrink its operations and cut jobs has sparked fears that Europe's best shot at a home-grown electric vehicle battery...
STOCKHOLM - Northvolt 's shock decision this week to shrink its operations and cut jobs has sparked fears that Europe 's best shot at a home-grown electric vehicle battery champion may stall, sector experts and people familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Coming just as former European Central Bank head Mario Draghi warned of green tech competition from China in a long awaited report, the announcement raises questions about Northvolt's ability to be a major force in Europe's electric mobility push. Northvolt will now need to buy its cathode active materials from Chinese or South Korean suppliers, said a person familiar with the matter.The travails of Northvolt, which is still loss-making despite securing orders worth over $50 billion from customers including top investor Volkswagen, underscore Europe's struggle to reduce Western carmakers' reliance on China, which controls 85% of global battery cells production, International Energy Agency data show.
BMW's decision to axe its contract was the result of Northvolt being two years behind on the batteries for that deal, meaning they would be obsolete by the time they would be delivered, an industry source told Reuters. Other businesses potentially at risk are the Swedish company's joint venture for a lithium conversion plant with Portugal's Galp Energia, a Swedish battery material recycling business called Revolt Ett as well as Hydrovolt, a battery recycling joint venture with Norsk Hydro.
But customers have been nervously following the situation, a source at one industry player and an industry expert who spoke to some of Northvolt's customers told Reuters. "Every setback costs money," said Daniel Brandell, a research leader at Uppsala University's battery research group Angstrom Advanced Battery Centre.
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