“Today’s batteries are not competitive,” said Jagdeep Singh, general manager of QuantumScape, based in San Jose, California. “Batteries have enormous potential and are vital to a renewable energy economy, but they need to get better.”
For the most part, all of the money that goes into battery technology is good news. Capitalism is working to solve a global problem. However, this reorganization of the auto industry will also claim some victims, such as the companies that build parts for cars and trucks with internal combustion engines, or the automakers and investors who rely on the wrong technology.
“Battery innovations are not overnight,” said Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne National Laboratory’s Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science. “It can take many years. All kinds of things can happen. “
Most experts are certain that the demand for batteries will boost China, which refines most of the metals used in batteries and produces more than 70 percent of all battery cells. According to predictions by Roland Berger, a German management consultancy, China’s influence on battery production will diminish only slightly over the next decade despite ambitious plans to expand production in Europe and the US.
Battery production has “profound geopolitical implications,” said Tom Einar Jensen, managing director of Freyr, which is building a battery factory in northern Norway to harness the region’s abundant wind and hydropower plants. “The European auto industry does not want to rely too much on imports from Asia in general and China in particular,” he added.
Freyr plans to raise $ 850 million as part of a proposed merger with Alussa Energy Acquisition Corporation, a Shell company that sold shares before it had assets. The deal, announced in January, would bring Freyr to the New York Stock Exchange. The company plans to manufacture batteries using technology developed by 24M Technologies of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The first priority for the industry is to make batteries cheaper. Electric car batteries for a midsize vehicle cost about $ 15,000, or about twice the price that electric cars need for mass adoption, Srinivasan said.
