[HN Gopher] Sweden's Northvolt raises $2.8B to supercharge EV ba... ___________________________________________________________________ Sweden's Northvolt raises $2.8B to supercharge EV battery output Author : cpach Score : 184 points Date : 2021-06-09 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com) | imartin2k wrote: | In case you're interested in Northvolt and other Swedish tech | companies: I'm curating a free weekly newsletter on Swedish tech | in English (the only one, afaik). You can check it out at | http://swedishtechweekly.com | cpach wrote: | Hey, that's an awesome resource! | imartin2k wrote: | Happy to hear that :)) | leogiertz wrote: | Thank you for doing it! We've been subscribers for a while now | and it's great. | imartin2k wrote: | My pleasure. It's fun, and there's so much going on in | Swedish tech. | gcheong wrote: | I'm disappointed that this is only about expanding factory | output, not some technology that would "supercharge" the actual | battery output. Will there be enough lithium in the world to meet | demand without some major advancements in the battery technology, | I wonder? | ashtonkem wrote: | Boring, incremental progress is how things get done. "only" | expanding factory output is a pretty big part of how you make | batteries cheaper and usable in more applications. | amelius wrote: | And they don't even have access to Tesla's "tabless" battery | patent. | | https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/just-how-much-breakthr... | brianwawok wrote: | The is no shortage of Lithium, just need more mines to open up. | The price rising will make more places profitable to mine | Lithium. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the Earth's | crust. | ajross wrote: | To be fair: it also concentrates poorly (there are no | "lithium veins"), making extraction comparatively expensive | in relation to common metals. So there's a real problem to be | solved here. But it's not a "shortage" and we won't "run | out". | | The _other_ components of Lithium battery chemistries, | however, tend to be much rarer. Most (by kWh capacity) | manufactured battery chemistries today are dependent on | cobalt, which is a rare earth with some finite quantity of | reserves that absolutely can "run out". Some manufacturers | (Tesla in particular) seem to be having some success moving | off that and onto nickel chemistries. We'll see. | ajross wrote: | We aren't going to see major advancements like that. Lithium | cells are pretty mature technology at this point. What you're | going to see is tweaked chemistries and designs (c.f. the Tesla | 4680 cell everyone likes to talk about) that make batteries a | little cheaper or a little lighter here and there, but with | some tradeoffs. | | That said: Lithium cells are already good enough and cheap | enough for ground transportation to be practical. And that is | in some sense the "last frontier". Static applications are | already as well served as they ever will be, and no, battery | powered aviation just isn't going to be practical ever (carbon | nerds need to look at synfuels there). | | We had the amazing revolution in battery technology already, | basically. And it enabled your EV and your phone. We won the | game about 15 years ago. | wolfram74 wrote: | If this[0] shakes out, lithium will not be the limiting | component. If. | | https://www.mining.com/scientists-develop-cheap-and-easy-met... | nickik wrote: | Nice company. Basically two guys who worked on Tesla Nevada and | were like 'we could do this in Europe'. I saw some of their | earliest talk and I was like this is a brilliant move for them, | the European were really slow on the uptake with EV and supply | chain localization. | | This gave them a really nice head start to be able to get all the | funding. | | They seem to be doing some interesting stuff with vertically | integrating cathode, but I haven't found to much information | about that. | tpmx wrote: | With the quite high factory worker manpower cost here in Sweden | I was (maybe still am) a bit skeptical against this commodity | play. | | There are many examples in the past where commodity | manufacturing projects have eventually failed badly against | Asian competitors with dramatically lower employee costs. | (Heck, even specifically in the battery space.) | | As I understand it, in the short term the primary motivation is | providing battery volumes at a steady/guaranteed rate to their | European car industry investors since there currently is a lack | of stable global supply. Hard to argue against this. | | In the longer term, I'm guessing Northvolt is gambling that | co2-neutral manufacturing of batteries will become an important | enough differentiator - either by customer choice or EU | legislation - that they'll be able to sell their batteries at | what might end up being a relatively high premium. | mongol wrote: | I think it should be seen in context of automotive | manufacturing supply chains, just in time delivery and all | that. There are still much automotive manufacturing in Europe | and transporting a vital part of an electric car all the way | from Asia might not make sense from a supply chain | perspective? | tpmx wrote: | I don't think they'll keep using European-built batteries | when Chinese-built batteries are readily available at a | noticably lower price, perhaps 5 years from now unless | there are e.g. tax penalties in place for owning a car with | a battery made with co2-polluting power. Consumers will go | for the car that's 10% cheaper. | alkonaut wrote: | If manpower is a visible cost (vs power, transports, raw | materials) you probably aren't doing battery manufacturing | right. Automated high power manufacturing should be very | competitive close to cheap hydro power and cheap ports near | auto factories. | tpmx wrote: | Half a year ago they were projecting having 3k employees in | 2025. | abductee_hg wrote: | uh, are they also committing to raise the energy density, but | then only will build bigger batteries? :) | jorgenveisdal wrote: | Met the CEO when he was VP of Supply Chain at Tesla. Super | humble, super Swedish, very bright. This will be huge. | bosie wrote: | > super Swedish | | Hah, what does that mean? | jorgenveisdal wrote: | Hard to explain. I guess it's a Norway-Sweden thing | bberrry wrote: | Forgive my brazen armchairing but I question whether it's the | right move to go all-in with Li-ion batteries at this time. Both | solid state and Aluminium-graphene technologies seem around the | corner and are extremely promising. | zizee wrote: | I am no expert either, but I would expect it will take at least | ten years to commercialize any new battery technology. | | Investments made today into li-ion production would expect to | have a return on investment in under ten years, so it makes | sense to make such an investment. | | Edit: If it were to take less time to commercialize the new | chemistry, it would be because it can piggyback off existing | techniques. If that were the case, converting existing infra to | the new battery chemistry would be possible. So the current | investment would likely not be wasted. | coenhyde wrote: | "around the corner" is the problem. That isn't now. Li-ion is | good enough and the tipping point has been reached where we can | now have mass adoption of EV's with Li-ion. IMO it's more | important to grow the EV market share with existing Li-ion | batteries than hold off for a future tech which may not arrive. | + Growing the EV market will spur further investment in | alternative battery tech. bigger market = bigger investments | antattack wrote: | I've read few articles about it today and some are incorrectly | reporting that Northvolt will be producing 150GWh of batteries | after 6bln investment. | | $2.8bln will finance 20GWh production upgrade, therefore | Northvolt will need to raise a lot more money to achieve 150GWh | production. | Growling_owl wrote: | How come when a company is not American the intro is always: | | [Country's]+[company name] | | Whereas if the company is American it's always: | | [founder's name]+[company name] | | I don't know if it has to do with media or with the fact that | foreign founders might want to be more in the dark compared to | American ones. | | In Europe wealth is historically frowned upon so people might be | trying to get their millions or billions in the dark and only | speak and be relevant among decision makers circles. | | If that's the case then those people will dominate American | corporate world in the future because it's appearent that being | famous only means trouble. | | Besides it makes tremendous sense. Wealth gives you a megaphone | but such megaphone is useless if people are able to look your | speech rehersals, while you sweat,strutter and stop mid sentence. | | It's my opinion that the journey of an entrepreneur who wants to | get into politcs should be: | | Money > Sports franchise > social relevance ..or | | Money > Own Rock band > social relevance | | Money > your own movie > social relevance | | It's really cringy when these SaaS guys or EVs guys try to appeal | to the masses. You end up being hated by those who hate the rich | and ignored by everybody else | azinman2 wrote: | I'm not sure about the founder part (or that it really is the | trend you suggest), but I think it's pretty normal given HN is | an American media property with a heavy American user base that | anything foreign gets called out with that country. The same | thing happens in other countries unless the subject is well | familiar. For example, searching HN's history for Bosche | doesn't label the company itself as belonging to Germany. ARM | similar isn't identified by country either. This is a new | company, and typically when manufacturing is involved, the site | of manufacturing is labeled (even if in the US by state). | cpach wrote: | Good point. However, in this case the headline was chosen by | Reuters. | krullix wrote: | If the founder/Investors of Northvolt had to choose, I'm pretty | sure they would prefer their names in the title. Guess their | names are just not famous enough, so better attribute to it to | Sweden. More people probably knows who Elon Musk is than what | Sweden is anyways :) | | //A Swede | Growling_owl wrote: | > More people probably knows who Elon Musk is than what | Sweden is anyways | | Musk is like a weird combination of Michael Bloomberg and | Donald Trump. | | He tweets like Trump, but when he gets on stage he stutters | and speak as badly as Michael Bloomberg. | | Regardless of what one thinks of Trump people knew him for | more than being just a rich guy, he was the CEO of the | Apprentice and Yankees #1 fan for a long time. | | He also speaks with the utmost confidence, this is a great | social skill and you can use it at will if you don't need the | academics and the high IQ people on your side...in politics | it's one person, one vote | alex_young wrote: | I moved from California to Switzerland for a couple of years, | and more than one person asked if I was going to learn | Swedish. It's kind of sad really. | nickik wrote: | > I'm from Switzerland | | > Oh amazing, Sweden is beautiful | | _pikachu face_ | chartpath wrote: | US-bias is lame, but I can think of a couple counter-examples | where it doesn't usually need to be mentioned: e.g. Shopify and | Spotify. Could it be that once a company is successful then it | doesn't come up as much? | cpach wrote: | This is a big thing for Sweden, especially for the region of | Norrland. | | I guess one could say that Norrland is like Sweden's Montana or | something like that. | | Currently Norrland is receiving lots of business interest and | investments. Northvolt is one example. H2 Green Steel is another. | For the local population I believe this is very good news. It | should give lots of job opportunities that will spill over to | other areas such as service jobs. | | Some reasons that are often cited why Norrland is a good location | is the availability of clean energy from hydropower[0] and that | there is also a high level of competence already when it comes to | modern manufacturing methods. | | _[Edit: province - region]_ | | [0] Totally different story in the south of Sweden where nuclear | reactors have been decomissioned, and the energy availability | seems to become more and more uncertain. | rags2riches wrote: | (Norrland isn't a province. It's one of three regions of | Sweden, roughly the two northern thirds of the country by area, | containing nine of the twenty-five traditional provinces.) | cpach wrote: | Good point! I edited my comment. | GaylordTuring wrote: | This is further complicated by the fact that Sweden is | divided into 21 administrative units (the twenty-five | traditional provinces are non-administrative units), in | Swedish called "regioner" (formerly "landsting"), where five | of these are situated in Norrland. | gus_massa wrote: | It may be also relevant that (from Wikipedia) it only has | 1.2M /10.3M = 12% of the population of Sweden. | notJim wrote: | Way more than Montana, which has only .3% of the US | population, though Norrland and Montana are similar in | absolute numbers. | nodesocket wrote: | Interesting. I've been to Stockholm a few times extended and | definitely heard of Lapland, but not Norland. | Lapland wrote: | Lappland is a part of Norrland, but both of these terms are | used in a historical sense as cultural/geographical | regions, and nowadays replaced by counties | nodesocket wrote: | Username checks out. :-) | alkonaut wrote: | Norr means "north". Norrland is the Northern 2/3 of the | country. It's not formally defined but more like the | "Midwest" and similar. Lapland is a part of Norrland. | kzrdude wrote: | Lapland is a historical province in Sweden. You'll also | find a northernmost part of Finland with the same name: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland | | One area around three national parts (Padjelanta, Sarek, | Stora sjofallet) is also called Laponia. | | But the political division of Sweden around that area - | that's Norbottens lan, so that's the subdivision that | people care most about in their day-to-day life. | cuspycode wrote: | Finland was historically a part of Sweden for about 600 | years, and the northernmost part was called Lapland. | Nowadays that part is split into Swedish Lapland and | Finnish Lapland. Norrland (literally "northern land") is | the name for the part of Sweden that is north of | approximately 61 degrees northern latitude, so it includes | Swedish Lapland but also a lot more. | zibzab wrote: | Green Steel sounds extremely interesting. | | If this is succesful, I hope it leads to big changes in other | heavy industries. | cpach wrote: | I fully agree. I'm very excited to follow this development. | jlundberg wrote: | Here's a link with more info in english on the topic: | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-23/hydrogen-. | .. | occz wrote: | Is Province really the correct nomenclature for Norrland? I'd | call it a region at best. | GaylordTuring wrote: | Region in English, yes, using the definition from Wikipedia: | "In geography, regions are areas that are broadly divided by | physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact | characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of | humanity and the environment (environmental geography)". | | Absolutely not "region" in Swedish though, which refers to | the 21 administrative units that Sweden is divided into. | | I've always found it extremely difficult to translate these | concepts between different languages. | mongol wrote: | Norrland is one of three landsdelar. Wikipedia translates it | Lands of Sweden. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_of_Sweden | nickik wrote: | Telga, one of my favorite battery supply companies is up there | too. They will be locally mining, refining and coat graphite in | the same area. | | Its a really cool company, I recommend people check them out. | Robotbeat wrote: | Good. We need as much battery capacity as possible. We need to | overbuild it so batteries are super cheap and carmakers are | begging customers to buy EVs. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-09 23:00 UTC)