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Europe tools up against US, Asia as a car battery force
June 15, 2021

Europe tools up against US and Asia as a car battery force.

Surrounded by a forest of tall green pine trees, 125 miles south of the Arctic circle, a giant electric battery factory is rapidly taking shape on a site as big as 71 football pitches.

Plant's manager Fredrik Hedlund said the project will be a gigafactory, a term coined by Tesla founder Elon Musk to describe his first high-volume plant for producing lithium-ion electric battery cells, deep in the Nevada desert.

Startup Northvolt, co-founded by two former Tesla executives, is in Skellefteå, a much chillier location, in northern Sweden.

But as a base in Västerås just outside Stockholm, it is hoping to provide a quarter of Europe's electric batteries, as demand for electric vehicles surges amidst the global race to cut carbon emissions.

He said by 2030, 40% of all new cars sold will be electric according to the latest forecast by the investment bank UBS, rising to almost 100% of the new car market by 2040.