BMW inks €2bn battery deal with Sweden’s Northvolt
Auto giant BMW has signed a €2bn(£1.8bn) deal with Swedish energy firm Northvolt to provide battery cells to power its electric vehicles.
The Scandinavian company, which was founded by two former Tesla executives, will make the cells using only renewable energy at a new facility in the north of Sweden.
In a statement, BMW said that the two companies would work together to source the cobalt and lithium minerals required to make the battery components.
It said that the raw materials would come from mines that fulfil the high sustainability standards of both companies.
The deal comes as competition hots up between automakers to secure access to limited supplies of the precious metals, with local sources becoming increasingly favoured.
Northvolt will be BMW’s third battery cell partner, adding to existing deals with Chinese firm CATL and Samsung.
The partnership forms part of BMW’s plans to have 25 electric car models on the road by 2023, with over half of them fully electrified.
The Munich-based firm has predicted that global sales of its electrified vehicles will increase 30 per cent every year until 2025.
At the end of last year, there were BMW 500,000 electric vehicles on the road.
In Europe, it said that by 2030 half of its new vehicle sales would be electric models.
Commenting on the deal, board member Andreas Wendt said: “Signing this contract is another step towards meeting our growing need for battery cells in the long term.
“We are systematically driving electrification of our vehicle fleet”.