"EU Approves $986 Million German State Aid For Northvolt’s Battery Plant, Matching US Subsidies
The European Commission gave the green light to a
$986 million German measure aimed at bolstering Swedish
sodium-ion battery-batteries company Northvolt's initiative to build a battery production plant for electric vehicles in the country.
The sum sways Northvolt's decision towards Europe; absent this aid, the plant would have been situated in the United States, where comparable support was offered under the Inflation Reduction Act.
"This $986 million German measure is the first individual aid being approved to prevent an investment from being diverted away from Europe, under the new possibility offered by the Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework since March 2023,”
said Margrethe Vestager, executive vice-president of the European Commission, responsible for competition policy.
Matching aid, said Vestager, is a European Union’s ‘new feature’ to allow European companies to find an equivalent sum of investment or aid in Europe, that they can receive in other jurisdictions.
Germany's proposed measure is designated to assist Northvolt in establishing a facility in the city of
Heide, with an annual capacity of 60 GWh, able to produce batteries for approximately 800,000 to 1 million electric vehicles annually.
This investment aligns with the EU’s efforts to advance towards a net-zero economy, echoing the principles of the Green Deal Industrial Plan. “This is an important step for the electrification of transport in Europe while preserving the level playing field in the Single Market," said Vestager
Furthermore, the plant contructions alignes with the plans of the EU-block to produce more environmentally friendly and responsible batteries. The Swedish battery maker’ commercial sodium-ion battery cells are free from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite, limiting the outsourcing of raw materials. With the revision of the
Batteries and Waste Batteries Regulation, it will be a prerequisite for commercialisations that batteries will be made with raw materials sourced respecting both environmental and human rights.
Plant’s operations are slated to start in 2026, with full production capacity expected by 2029."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daniel...rthvolts-battery-plant-matching-us-subsidies/
"Quantum leap for electromobilityCan't burn:
Chinese launch new e-car with sodium battery
January 03, 2024
View attachment 53837
The new JAC Yiwei 3 with sodium-ion battery.
Electric cars with sodium-ion batteries are now being mass-produced in China for the first time. According to media reports, the Chinese e-car brand Yiwei has been producing a small electric car with a sodium-ion battery since the end of December, which is due to be delivered to the first customers this month.
It could be a quantum leap for electromobility: The new small electric car from Chinese brand Yiwei is now the first electric car with a sodium-ion battery to be mass-produced. Yiwei is a brand of the Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Corporation (JAC), which also has a joint venture with Volkswagen.
The Yiwei EV 3 is a compact electric vehicle whose cylindrical sodium-ion battery is manufactured by the Beijing-based company HiNa Battery, reports the industry portal CarNewsChina. Yiwei is still a young electric car brand that was only launched by JAC in 2023. The JAC parent company, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Holdings (JAG), is 50 percent state-owned and 50 percent owned by the Volkswagen Group. The German automotive giant had already acquired the stake in 2020. However, according to Spiegel Online, Volkswagen was not involved in the development of the EV 3.
Sodium batteries are cheaper, safer and non-flammable
The Yiwei 3 emerged from the Sehol E10X prototype, which was also equipped with a sodium-ion battery. To date, most electric cars have lithium-ion batteries, but lithium is expensive and is sometimes mined under critical conditions. Sodium is a much cheaper raw material that is available in large quantities - for example in the form of common salt (sodium chloride). Sodium-ion batteries are also considered safer and are said to be non-flammable. However, they also have a lower energy density and are heavier than lithium-ion batteries.
The range of the Sehol E10X prototype is said to be 252 kilometers with the sodium-ion battery. The battery has a capacity of 25 kilowatt hours and can be charged from ten to 80 percent in 20 minutes. CarNewsChina gives the energy density as 120 watt hours per kilogram on a pack basis and 140 watt hours per kilogram on a cell basis. It is not yet known how expensive the Yiwei EV 3 will be.
At the end of 2023, Swedish battery manufacturer
Northvolt announced that it had achieved a major success in the development of sodium-ion batteries. The energy storage system is more sustainable than batteries that use the usual chemicals made from nickel, manganese and cobalt or iron phosphate and does not require lithium or graphite. According to Tagesschau
(German main news media), the Fraunhofer Institute sees great opportunities in the field of sodium batteries: "Thanks to their unique properties, a sodium-ion battery can press the reset button, so to speak, for the conventional way of thinking and using batteries. With sodium batteries, we can suddenly make use of a domestic raw material base that is independent of strategic, even critical imports," explains Michael Stelter, researcher at Fraunhofer IKTS and Director at the Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry CEEC at Friedrich Schiller University (FSU) in Jena."
https://efahrer.chip.de/news/kann-n...bringen-neues-e-auto-mit-natrium-akku_1017022
https://www.focus.de/auto/elektroau...ues-e-auto-mit-natrium-akku_id_259544679.html
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I'm not posting this because I assume that this is the solution. I suspect it's just another approach. Why else would China invest over 2.5B in graphite anode factories. It's not my topic. Maybe one of you could comment on whether this is a competition or an alternative (because of the lack of range).
