Volkswagen and BMW are investing a billion euros in a battery factory for electric vehicles

Sales of electric vehicles in the world are gaining momentum, so large automakers need more and more lithium-ion batteries, but most of them come from China and South Korea, and not always supplies are stable, which makes big players look for replacement options.

One of these is the construction of its own lithium-ion battery manufacturing plants directly in Europe, so two German automakers Volkswagen and BMW decided to invest billions of dollars in such construction.

The Northvolt company will build the battery production plant - one factory will be built in Skellefteå (Sweden), then another huge factory in Lower Saxony (Germany) will be built.

Construction of the Swedish company will begin in August, and in 2021 large-scale production of batteries will start. Initially, the capacity of the factory will be 16 GW, which is slightly less than, for example, Gigafactory 1 Tesla, generating 20 GW per year. But in the future, the capacity of the Swedish plant will be increased at least twice.

As for the German factory, it will be built by the combined efforts of Volkswagen and Northvolt, and will begin to produce lithium-ion batteries from the end of 2023 or from the beginning of 2024.