How Chinese EV and Battery Makers Will Break Into the U.S.

Happy 2022 and welcome back to The Electric! 

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This week, we look at how the critical battery materials shortage could be a pathway for Chinese electric vehicle makers into the U.S. and European markets.  

If anything is keeping U.S. and European electric vehicle makers awake at night as the new year begins, it’s how to obtain enough batteries for the millions of EVs they are preparing to produce over the coming decade. None of them has managed to overcome the industry’s critical shortfall of battery metals and minerals such as lithium, nickel and graphite.

None, that is, except Polestar, a four-year-old Sweden-based EV manufacturer, and its parent company Volvo. Both have a powerful advantage in their owner—Geely, one of China’s biggest automakers, which just inked a deal with Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving–car unit—and can tap into the country’s plentiful supply of batteries. Others may fret about battery access, but not Polestar or Volvo. “Semiconductors are more of an issue [for Polestar] in the very short term,” Dennis Nobelius, Polestar’s chief operating officer, told me.