Europe’s nascent battery industry is reeling from the global slowdown in electric car sales, forcing companies to cancel or postpone projects that would have powered more than 2mn EVs for a year. Slow consumer uptake and competition from Chinese cell manufacturers have led to a pullback in investment plans for about 158 gigawatt hours of forecast production in the region since the start of the year, according to lithium battery consultancy SC Insights.
Battery plants are complex, capital-intensive manufacturing operations, creating challenges for newcomers to consistently produce cells tailored to customer specifications at a scale large enough to bring costs down to the same level as Asian incumbents. “We can beat them on product performance,” said Peter Carlsson, Northvolt chief executive. “We need to prove that we can match them in execution,” he added, on the company’s ability to manufacture batteries at scale.