thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]

Feels like we sort of passed over the massive news of the Northvolt (Europe’s only EV battery producer) collapse a few weeks back, so I’m going to re-up it here to highlight how monumentally fucked the European automobile industry is long term. Not exactly news to anybody here that’s been paying attention, but the staggering mismanagement of what is so obviously a key and strategic piece of European industry is perhaps still baffling. The article’s name is “The Northvolt dilemma: can European EVs avoid relying on Asian batteries?”, and as the Betteridge law of headlines states, the obvious answer to this question is “No.”

Two months before Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in the US, Robin Zeng, known as China’s “battery king”, had a quick but grim answer as to why European battery makers were struggling to make good products. “They have a wrong design . . . they have a wrong process . . . and they have the wrong equipment. How can they scale up?” the chief executive of CATL told Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway’s $1.8tn oil fund. “So almost all mistakes together.” The bleak assessment from the world’s biggest electric vehicle battery manufacturer captures the scale of the failure for the industries behind the critical technology for Europe’s decarbonisation, leaving governments, companies and investors at a loss as to how to recraft the continent’s strategy to compete with China.

Northvolt’s demise means the battle for dominance of the European market is likely to play out between Asian battery makers. LGES and SK On both have European plants, in Poland and Hungary respectively, while CATL has a factory in Germany and a second site in Hungary due to begin production next year. But Tim Bush, a Seoul-based battery analyst at UBS, said there was little prospect at present that the Asian battery makers would be able to help the EU to meet its target for 90 per cent of the continent’s EV batteries to be produced locally by 2030. Bush noted that Korean battery makers were already paring back their investments in Europe, having invested billions of dollars in plants in North America that have been running at low utilisation rates because of lower than expected consumer demand for EVs. Potential Chinese battery investments on the continent were also likely to be complicated by the ongoing trade dispute between Brussels and Beijing over EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, he added. “The Koreans are not expanding, the Chinese have suspended construction and Europe’s new entrants are dropping like flies,” said Bush.

With European start-ups still behind in their ability to manufacture batteries at scale, industry executives say the only solution may be to continue their reliance on Asian participants until homegrown companies can absorb technology knowhow on battery chemistry, mass production and equipment manufacturing. “We need to find a deal with China because we won’t be able to compete . . . without the support of the Chinese companies that control the mining industry, chemicals, refining and their capacity and competence,” Luca De Meo, Renault’s chief executive, told reporters last month.

So basically, the Europeans destroyed their only chance of domestic battery consumption by epic mismanagement, and their acquiescence to USAmerican empire means they’re fucking up their opportunity to draw Chinese EV investments into Europe proper due to tensions and sanctions, and the US/South Korea can’t even begin to supply the necessary battery supply for the EU, so their car industry is basically fucked. The USAmerican destruction of European industry proceeds apace…

Source: https://archive.is/4Ys7n

Feels like a lot of shit has happened and the vibes are completely off, but I think a lot of folks here and elsewhere have kind of forgotten that the American imperial machine is still in a state of rapid unraveling and no “wins” in the Middle East are going to stop it. Compared to 2015, for instance, the world is entirely different. So many more regions can afford to effectively ignore the United States and pursue their own interests, for good or ill. The civil war in Sudan is case and point; the US can’t do shit to stop it, and has no real influence there at all. Fucking Ukraine is doing more on the ground to shape Sudan that the United States, let alone actors like the UAE. India has shown complete disregard for the American imperial project to the point of assassinating enemies of the Indian state in Canada of all places. The Sahel has been able to entirely pursue its own interests, and there’s nothing the West can do about it. They can’t even stop Yemen from closing down the Red Sea. There’s a shit ton of dooming here, but I think it’s important to not lose sight of the fact that the world has irrevocably changed in the last decade, that the space for maneuver is far wider than its been in decades, and there’s virtually nothing the United States or its pawns can do to change this continuing shift.

Christ, what a miserable state of affairs. Assad has always been a piece of shit, but I cannnot imagine how awful things are going to get once again in Syria without his regime at least nominally committed to multiethnic harmony. And the Axis of Resistance? What a joke tbh, I’m almost glad Nasrallah isn’t here to see this. Iran is just watching all its pieces wiped from the board, for what? Some vague hope that Trump of all people is going to dial back sanctions? Disgusting. I hope I’m wrong, but grim days seem to be ahead.