[
]
Road to 2045
Road to 2045 A Swede with an American Mindset By Jakob Lagercrantz
T
here is something fascinating when American entrepreneurship mixes with the Swedish stubborn focus of purpose. It can be seen with Armand Duplantis in pole vault, or the many Swedish professional ice hockey players in North America. But we also see this in industry. Peter Carlsson was tired when I met him during the Ekotransport conference in Stockholm in 2016. He was keynote speaker and had just left four intense years as purchase and logistics manager at California-based Tesla, some of the more taxing years for that company. A year at Tesla is, according to former employees, as tough as ten years somewhere else. Peter came back deeply committed to a new vision. He was going to build Europe’s first and largest green battery production plant. Few believed he could do it. He needed 40 billion SEK from investors; he still had very few industrial partners and did not know where to set up the plant.
The story is similar to Tesla some ten years earlier. A group of technical whiz kids got together and developed an electric propulsion system. Enters Elon Musk with a vision that seemed unattainable. He first wanted to develop a fast super car, then a luxurious electric car and eventually an electric car for everyone. He did it. The Tesla Roadster came in 2008, the Model S in 2021, Model X as a bonus in 2015, and the Tesla 3 in 2017. Today Tesla is worth as much as nine of the largest car companies in the world (Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, GM, Ford, Honda, Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot). Not bad for a company less than 20 years old. Peter Carlsson, born in southern Sweden and educated at the Luleå University of Technology in the far north, was smitten by the entrepreneurial spirit of Tesla and came back to Sweden with far wilder ideas than we usually see in the country of mellanmjölk (semi-skimmed milk). His vision was a gigantic venture, a pioneering project in a country with few electric vehicles at the time. His timing was good, the electric vehicle market was about to take off in earnest, and he had a bold and unique concept.
Today, Sweden is Europe’s second fastest growing market for electric vehicles. The average share of electric vehicles was more than 30 percent in 2020, while the other EU member states are lagging behind with a modest ten percent. The need for batteries is increasing, and the EU has vowed to produce more batteries in Europe in an effort to break Chinese dominance. Global demand for batteries is set to increase 14-fold by 2030, and the EU estimates it could account for 17 percent of that demand. The European batteries will need to be sustainable, and by 2024 all batteries used in Europe will require a carbon emission label. Northvolt is a gigantic project. The plant just outside Skellefteå will start production in late 2021, just one year later than what Peter announced at the start. He has several industrial investors, including Scania, BMW and Volkswagen – companies that are crucial customers for the batteries produced. And the financing is secured. All this in five years! The Swedish 2030-secretariat was formed to support the decarbonization of the transport sector in Sweden. The secretariat is independent from political parties and technical solutions.
Rendering of Northvolt Ett, Northvolt’s first large-scale battery factory being established in Skellefteå in northern Sweden. © Northvolt
[ ]
Swedish Press | March 2021 25
