First up, BloombergBusinessweek, October 11:
Just below the Arctic Circle, a vast factory owned by Northvolt AB churns out electric-vehicle batteries for Europe’s biggest automakers. On Sweden’s west coast, four-year-old Heart Aerospace AB is building an electric plane ordered by United Airlines and Air Canada. And in Stockholm, startup X Shore AB has developed a $99,000 battery-powered vessel it says heralds a “Tesla moment” for leisure boating.
These companies and dozens more make Sweden a thriving hub for innovations in greener transportation, with the most tech investment per capita in Europe. A skilled workforce, abundant investment capital for climate projects, and ample supplies of renewable energy have helped the country of 10 million become a leader in clean-technology startups. “A couple of years ago we only had legacy companies,” says Anders Forslund, Heart’s chief executive officer. “Now we have an ecosystem of startups pushing the established companies forward.”*****Heart, which counts a Bill Gates-backed fund among its investors, plans to set up a factory at an airfield near Gothenburg. It has more than 230 orders from three airlines for a 30-seat, battery-powered aircraft that it aims to start delivering by 2028. H2 Green Steel in July won a permit to build a $4 billion mill using renewable electricity in the northern city of Boden, part of a push to decarbonize one of the most energy-intensive industries. Einride AB is developing electric trucks near Gothenburg for vegan milk producer Oatly Group AB. In June, Einride—backed by Soros Fund Management—got regulatory approval to test a driverless delivery vehicle on public roads in the US....
Last October, when Volvo unveiled what it called the world’s first electric vehicle made of fossil-free steel, it underwhelmed some who’d been eager for the drop. Though the majority was made from green steel—from hydrogen power and not coal—some parts of the vehicle were made from traditional steel, including the electric motor.
The rollout suggested that it will take a lot of work before even a single component in a vehicle can be fossil free, and that even the big, legacy car companies are taking slow, incremental steps toward fully decarbonizing.
But one electric motorbike maker isn’t going the incremental route. The Swedish company Cake has the ambitious goal to produce an almost entirely fossil-free electric vehicle by 2025, which would be the cleanest of its kind. Though EVs are cleaner in the long run, their production emits far more carbon than its gas counterparts. For Cake, producing the off-road dirt bike will require cutting carbon out of a number of processes, from lithium mining, to transportation, to manufacturing, which will take time and collaboration with various partners. The bike won’t—and, realistically, can’t—be entirely fossil free. Rather, the goal is to share its wins and losses with other players in the transportation industry and show how getting close to zero carbon is ultimately possible.The process will be one of trial and error, says Stefan Ytterborn, Cake’s founder and CEO, and transparency will be key. The project will be completely open source, and Cake will report its progress every six weeks to show its fellow vehicle manufacturers, and even competitors, both its successes and challenges. “We’re inviting the industry to look into what we’re doing in terms of success and failures,” he says.
Ytterborn is frank that the bike won’t be completely fossil free. “Just by being human beings, we will never be able to achieve 100% decarbonizing,” he says. Cake’s current off-road bike, the Kalk, on which the 2025 version will be modeled, emits about 1,186 kilograms (about 2,615 pounds) of carbon during production, which Cake calculates is about 20 times more than the production of a kilogram of beef, and about 30 times less than that of a midsize electric car. The plan is to drive that number down step by step. Getting to 75% to 80% fossil-free would be “a meaningful difference,” he says.....
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Batteries: Northvolt's Swedish Gigafactory Comes to Life
From UPI (also on blogroll at right), December 29:
Northvolt produces first lithium-ion battery in Sweden
The Swedish battery company Northvolt said Wednesday it has produced its first lithium-ion battery, in an effort to rival battery leaders like Tesla in the United States and others in Asia.
Northvolt officials said the battery was the first fully designed, developed and assembled at its "gigafactory" in Skelleftea, Sweden. The battery factory was valued in June by investors at $12 billion and employs more than 500 workers.
"Today is a great milestone for Northvolt, which the team has worked very hard to achieve," Peter Carlsson, CEO and co-founder of Northvolt said in a statement....
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Previously:
"Can Northvolt solve Europe’s impending electric car battery problem?"
- Northvolt Raises Another $2.75 Billion To Expand Swedish Battery Production
- "Western Europe claims 43% of global investments in battery manufacturing projects — report"
- Batteries: Swedish Lithium Ion Specialist Northvolt Buys Silicon Valley Lithium Metal Startup Cuberg
Northvolt has some big investors.
Batteries: Volkswagen Leads €886 Million Investment in Northvolt
September 2017
More on Northvolt, ABB and the 'World's Greenest Battery'
September 2017
ABB Teams up with Northvolt on Europe's Biggest Battery Plant
March 2017
"An Ex-Tesla Exec’s $4.2 Billion Battery Battle With Musk"
