Last week, this correspondent brought you an article from Australia about how China has captured 80% of the world’s solar market, all powered along by its coal-fired economy.
Now, it seems, Europe is on the brink of losing the EV battery market to China, too. According to the Telegraph, Europe’s electric car market rebellion is claiming its biggest scalp. There’s no reason to gloat though. The vast sums of money poured into the Swedish-based firm Northvolt, which has now filed for bankruptcy protection, have come from “investors, bondholders, pension funds and European governments since it was founded in 2016”, to say nothing of ceding yet more market dominance and strategic autonomy to China.
The Daily Sceptic flagged up Northvolt’s precarious situation back in September.
Northvolt is now down to its last $30 million and the CEO Peter Carlsson has stood down:
Northvolt has blamed its downfall on foundering demand for electric vehicles (EVs) across Europe. Its “capital structure and business plan were premised on the assumption that the electric vehicle industry would continue its pattern of consistent growth”, said Scott Millar, a restructuring adviser at Teneo, in the company’s court pleading.
As investor fervour for EVs reached its peak during the pandemic, Northvolt expanded aggressively across Europe, the United States and Canada, with plans for a network of gigafactories, as the facilities that manufacture car batteries are known.
However, the bottom fell out of the global market for battery-powered cars in 2023 as inflation and hesitant consumer demand led to a slowdown – and, in some cases, a slump – in EV sales.
Analysts at Rho Motion pared back their predictions for EV sales by a quarter, to 8.3 million by 2030. In Europe, home to Northvolt’s biggest clients, demand has been particularly weak. Sales are down 3% so far this year, according to Rho Motion. In Germany, they have fallen by 18%.
As this graph shows, the only real beneficiary of the EV market has been China:
Volkswagen, a major Northvolt customer and shareholder, last month announced plans to shut three factories in Germany, the first closures in its home market in its history.
At the same time, Chinese carmakers have been undercutting their European rivals by flooding the market with cheaper EVs that run on Chinese batteries. This piled pressure on Northvolt, which had aimed to set itself apart from rivals by developing clean batteries with renewable hydropower.
Even though it was producing 60,000 batteries per week and had $50 billion in future orders, some of Northvolt’s customers, such as BMW, reduced investments in the company as demand slowed. Government investors, meanwhile, withdrew billions in planned funding after Northvolt scaled back its plans for new factories.
The bankruptcy filing buys Northvolt time to salvage its business. Scania, a core customer owned by Volkswagen, has provided $100 million in debt-in-possession financing, a kind of emergency loan, while it has also unlocked $145 million in cash collateral.
“Northvolt’s liquidity picture has become dire,” Millar said in a court filing. It has debts of nearly $6 billion and has already wound down or pulled the plug on several divisions. Investors such as Baillie Gifford, BMW and Goldman Sachs all face having their stakes wiped out by its bankruptcy.
At least the CEO has had the dignity to stand down, admitting “we were overambitious”. But the problems run deeper:
While Northvolt has blamed its demise on the disintegration of EV demand, industry experts argue that mismanagement, inflated expectations and a lack of government investment in electrification are also to blame.
Reports have also suggested an over-reliance on Chinese machinery and engineers meant Northvolt lacked in-house expertise.
Andy Palmer, the former Aston Martin Chief Executive, says: “The biggest issue is that batteries are not easy to make and Northvolt haven’t satisfied the supply demands of their customers – that is a management issue.” James Frith, Europe head at investment firm Volta Energy Technologies, says: “Europe needs to rethink how it supports a nascent sector before China eats up the entire value chain.”
If Northvolt cannot be revived, Europe will cede what little gains it had made against China in building up its own battery supply chain. While EV demand has stalled, mandates to sell more green cars mean demand for batteries will grow. If they are not made in factories in Europe, the bloc will be perilously exposed to China.
“Europe needs battery capacity,” says Simon Moores, Chief Executive of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “The pendulum of industrial battery power has just swung east towards China.”
Yahoo! News has more.
There’s more on the story from Reuters, which includes this devastating observation:
“The biggest issue is that batteries are not easy to make and Northvolt haven’t satisfied the supply demands of their customers – that is a management issue,” said Andy Palmer, founder of consultancy Palmer Automotive said.
“The Chinese are technologically 10 years ahead of the West in batteries. That’s a fact,” he said.
At least eight companies have postponed or abandoned EV battery projects in Europe this year, including China’s Svolt and joint venture ACC, led by Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz.
In modern-day technological terms, 10 years might as well be 100 years.
Regardless of your views on EVs, the outlook is grim, and the strategic implications for Europe and Britain potentially catastrophic as they prematurely run down and outlaw older technologies, sacrificing it all on the altar of the Green Dream.
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A smidgeon more Carbon Dioxide and you get “Less SHARKS”???????? This indicates how utterly preposterous climate change politics masquerading as “science” is. There is not a shred of evidence for any of the claims and the speculative models they are all based on have all been totally wrong till now. It is quite remarkable how even when the facts do NOT fit the theory that the global government in waiting at the UN/WEF can get away with this garbage, but when you have all the bought and paid for mainstream TV channels like BBC and SKY promoting it on a daily basis with nonsense that “All scientists agree” and “we must act now before it is too late”, etc etc what can you expect from a general public who mostly don’t have the time to investigate every issue because they are busy with work and family life, so they think Investigative journalists are doing that investigating for them? ———Far from it. These TV channels and Newspapers are acting as activists. They question NOTHING, and when you question NOTHING you are not indulging in science. You are simply promoting “Official Science”.
Yes
+ the latest Delingpod with Bart Sibrel talking about the moon landings possibly being fake has left me with a few extra thoughts ! I was non plussed either way but I’m going to dig into it ! Sibrel is a typical bossy type Yank who despite that makes a compelling case & as he says it would blow our whole perception of the world wide open , both pre & post Plandemic !
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is little evidence man didn’t land on the moon. There is plenty of evidence that CO2 is not causing or going to cause dangerous changes to climate, and very little evidence that it will. All there is are computer models full of assumptions and not surprisingly they have all been completely wrong so far. The facts don’t fit the theory, and when that is the case then your theory is WRONG.
The “extraordinary claim” is that men have visited the moon.
Which is why Armstrong disappeared, Grisson was burnt to death and the drunk Aldrin admitted they never went anywhere – on tv more than once.
Wrong. There is no evidence man landed on the moon.
Explain to me how they passed without protection through the Van Allen radiation belt and why they need to do the window trick to simulate being at 120000 miles in space when in fact they were 170 miles up – the same as Shephard. The lighting in the air force hanger is so bad and so obvious it is painful to watch.
The evidence of the moon fraud is overwhelming. Oh but wait. You saw it on your little TV. Just like the Rona.
You cherry picked some stuff that suits you there mate. You have no evidence man did not go to the moon, which isn’t really that difficult, and do you seriously think that the entire NASA administration were able to pull of that con trick and no one ever whistleblew. —-But this article is actually about climate incase you didn’t notice.
“$cience.”
Or ‘The $cience.’
According to a UN official climate change now causes earthquakes, and big oil is responsible:
https://www.euronews.com/2023/02/09/climate-change-is-triggering-more-earthquakes-big-oils-interests-are-a-factor
Is there no end to this daftness?
Tesla invented a device which fitted into his pocket which was able to stimulate a localised earth tremor. On his death all of his work was seized by the FBI…. Strange that Turkey experienced a major quake just as it cleared its IMF debts….
“Confessions of a Computer Modeler
“Any model, including those predicting climate doom, can be tweaked to yield a desired result. I should know.”
After three iterations [of remodeling] I finally blurted out, “What number are you looking for?”
He didn’t miss a beat: He told me that he needed to show $2 billion of benefits to get the program renewed.
I finally turned enough knobs to get the answer he wanted, and everyone was happy.
Was the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] official asking me to lie? I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he believed in the value of continuing the program. (Congress ended the grants in 1990.)”
Robert J. Caprara, “Confessions of a Computer Modeler,”
The Wall Street Journal, 9 July 2014
https://www.wsj.com/articles/confessions-of-a-computer-modeler-1404861351
I made computer models for venture capital transactions – e.g. management buyouts. I too could get pretty much any result you wanted 5 years out and make it seem reasonable.
In total I sold about 200 models, including one to the Bank of England !
I was actually waiting for that.
“If a fault is primed or ready to rupture, all that is needed is the pressure of a handshake to set if off […] Environmental changes associated with rapid and accelerating climate breakdown could easily do the job,” professor of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London Bill McGuire pointed out
How precisely environmental changes associated with rapid and accelerating climate breakdown could exert pressure on faults is anybody’s guess. But since the good professor already pointed this out in 2012, ie, eleven years ago, this rapid and accelarting climate breakdown can’t have been very rapid and can’t have been accelerating very quickly.
Like many people I just think surely reality is going to catch up with them?
Surely? ….Any minute now?
…but no, on they go like some demented lunatic Duracell bunny….!
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-spend-energy-crisis-nears-800-billion-euros-2023-02-13/
“European countries’ bill to shield households and companies from soaring energy costs has climbed to nearly 800 billion euros, researchers said on Monday, urging countries to be more targeted in their spending to tackle the energy crisis.
European Union countries have now earmarked or allocated 681 billion euros in energy crisis speding, while Britain allocated 103 billion euros and Norway 8.1 billon euros since September 2021, according to the analysis by think-tank Bruegel…”
A self-inflicted energy crisis…and wait until they see next years bills!
Thanks for that link. I hadn’t seen that one.
Oh the irony. All this spent to SHIELD us from soaring energy costs.
.
Journalists and politicians for that matter are essentially salespeople.
And generally not very smart, though good at rat cunning.
A journalist’s raison d’etre is to make money for their employer and the “if it bleeds, it leads” principle ensures catastrophic fear works.
Banks no doubt act purely on profit motive.
I assume they consider aligning with climate catastrophism will make them immune to the “boycott/ divest” shrieking of the lunatic climate nihilists.
They are sales people selling one particular product though. ——–Climate Change.—————– It starts out with the big Corporate Globalists like the New York Times and the rest all just repeat what they say. There is no investigative journalism anymore. Only activism, for every UN/WEF agenda that the liberal left want to hoodwink the general public with.
Having a debate on any subject is an old fashioned idea for the left. Why have a debate when you can just close your opponent down by labelling them a denier or a hater.
Climate Change is so obviously nonsense. The predictions never come true. I can’t stop thinking about the following.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984
*****
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
………
I can cite well over a dozen predictions by climate scientists, starting from 1970, stating indefatigably that the World would be in complete devastation before now.
I’d happily do so, but think you’d all be bored with it after the first few.
.
“could disappear”, non-fiction!!