The Electric: A Few Companies Raise Funds, a Bright Spot in the Gloomy EV Industry

In 2021, Europe’s electric vehicle market was feverish. Seemingly every week, automakers announced new plans to spend billions developing EVs. Those EVs would require batteries, and Sweden’s Northvolt, the most ambitious of a small coterie of European battery manufacturing startups, made plans to triple the capacity of its new gigafactory near the Arctic Circle. The project would cost billions and entail immense risk—for one thing, Northvolt had not produced a single cell for delivery to a customer. Last month—three years after starting to look for investors—Northvolt finally tied up the loose ends of a sprawling, $5 billion debt deal involving a syndicate of 23 banks backed by guarantees from seven state-backed credit agencies.