Former Tesla executives plan to build $4bn Nordic battery plant | Hacker News Reader

Former Tesla executives plan to build $4bn Nordic battery plant

ft.com

52 pointsOsiris3015 comments

>Securing raw materials could also be tricky as hedge funds have recently accumulated a big stockpile of cobalt in a bet that the scarce metal, which boosts the power of lithium-ion batteries, will increase in price.

Has the bet on price increasing ensured that the price will not increase because now people are worried about the availability?

This definitely has an effect. Oil went through something similar.

It's behind a paywall. Anybody with access who can offer a TL;DR?

Click "Web" link above to get access.

Here's a different article on the same topic: https://electrek.co/2017/03/07/former-tesla-executives-gigaf...

The TL;DR is that the former head of supply chain of Tesla (who is Swedish) is trying to get funding to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Scandinavia. Largely because Europe doesn't have one and is reliant on Asian countries for their batteries (so he's seeking a kind of European energy independence).

He believes he can use minerals from mining operations in Finland as resources and local hydro/wind sources to power it.

The biggest hurdle is getting funding - it's expensive - but he does have initial phase backing from a few sources, including the state-owned utility service Vattenfall.

They are mainly looking to just provide for Europe and not challenge Tesla in the American market.

> The biggest hurdle is getting funding

I'm pretty sure that if he asks, the EU Commission will dump on him some hundreds of millions so he can kickstart the project. Energy Storage is strategic and they're continuously looking for projects that need support...

https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/technology-and-innovat...

There has been already talk in the finnish news that Vaasa is lobbying itself for the Tesla's new Gigafactory in Europe so it is going to be interesting to see how this develops.

Here is an article in english about Vaasa's ambitions if anyone is curious about their rationale.

https://www.vaasa.fi/en/tiedote/vaasa-finland-will-apply-for...

Given the strong commitment to renewable energy and the resulting increasingly unstable (noisy) grid, there will probably be a strong market in Europe and particularly Germany. There are strong graphite[1], spodumene[2], and cobalt[3] resources in Finland, Norway and Sweden- this seems like a really great idea. Batteries are energy intensive and labor-light to make so local renewable power will go pretty far in keeping costs competitive. China has to ship their lithium from central America and their cobalt from central Africa- volume and cheap labor/power are their only current advantages.

[1] http://investingnews.com/company-profiles/graphite-producer-...

[2] http://sciencenordic.com/finland-new-lithium-powerhouse

[3] https://www.adn.com/arctic/article/lapland-host-finlands-big...

FYI was initially blocked , was able to view by copying link into google search and viewing the cached version.

http://archive.is/pqtNR

Behind a paywall, perfect.

Yet when I searched the article from Google and went to the same page there was no paywall. And the url is the same. That's weird.

Maybe they do something with the referrer?

Google penalizes paywalls in Search Results. To get around this, if you have a referral header from Google companies often won't show the paywall for that article.

This works for many, if not most, online publications.

I followed the web link and still hit a paywall. Perfect.

Edit: I went to the "Top Stories" link, which was right above the identical (and paywalled) search results link, and that got me through.

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