The Year Ahead

Northvolt Wants Europe to Be the Global Leader in Battery Making

Peter Carlsson, CEO of the Swedish startup, says he’s on track to start production at his Skelleftea factory by yearend.

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By Niclas Rolander

January 22, 2021 at 5:01 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the January 25, 2021 issue of businessweek.

Peter Carlsson, a former executive at Tesla Inc., founded Northvolt AB in October 2016 seeking to shift the balance of battery-making power from Asia to Europe. He spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek about the four-year effort to get his company up and running. Production at its main facility in Skelleftea in northern Sweden is expected to start at the end of 2021.

Last year we were able to recruit almost 500 new employees, raise a lot of capital, design product plans, and more. So we’ve created the conditions to really get started—2021-22 will be our execution years, when we will take what we’ve developed and scale up production significantly.