Europe's Biggest Battery Hope Goes Bust

Swedish battery maker Northvolt has filed for bankruptcy in its home country, citing a wide range of factors in the highly complex industry. Northvolt, founded by two former Tesla execs, had been seen as Europe's best hope for a regional producer of batteries to power electric vehicles, but it will now be split up and sold, the New York Times reports. The company, which secured a $5 billion loan from the European Union last year, said it faced a "series of successive challenges in recent months that have eroded its financial position." It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US in November.

The challenges, the company said, included "rising capital costs, geopolitical instability, subsequent supply chain disruptions, and shifts in market demand." Northvolt had sought to expand quickly to compete with Chinese battery makers, but the effort to "grow aggressively in a range of battery technologies threw up a breathtaking number of operational hurdles," Bloomberg reports.

The company said its North American operations are solvent, but it's not clear how the bankruptcy will affect its plans for a $4.9 billion battery plant in Quebec, reports the CBC. Northvolt's main business was lithium-ion batteries, but in 2023 it said it had made a "fundamental breakthrough" in sodium-ion battery technology. (More batteries stories.)