Car manufacturer BMW has withdrawn an order for battery cells worth two billion euros from Swedish supplier Northvolt. “Northvolt and the BMW Group have jointly decided to focus Northvolt’s activities on the goal of developing next-generation battery cells,” a BMW spokesman said on Thursday, confirming a report in “Manager Magazine.”
The magazine cited problems the cell supplier, founded in 2016, had with ramping up industrial series production as the reason. Northvolt is two years behind schedule and is producing too much waste.
BMW did not want to comment on the reasons for the order cancellation. BMW is “still very interested in establishing a high-performance manufacturer of circular and sustainable battery cells in Europe,” the spokesman said.
Northvolt plans to build battery cells for electric cars in Schleswig-Holstein from 2026. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Economics and Climate Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) were present at the groundbreaking ceremony for the “Gigafactory” near Heide in March.
BMW had ordered the Northvolt cells for its current fifth generation of batteries. They would be manufactured from 2024 in the Northvolt factory in Skellefteå, northern Sweden, with energy “100 percent from wind and hydropower,” as both companies emphasized when the contract was signed in July 2020. Now the Korean supplier Samsung SDI in particular is to fill the gap. However, the next generation battery cells that BMW needs for its “New Class” electric cars are to come from Northvolt.