A wave of layoffs hits EV battery companies
It’s been a tough few weeks for workers at next-gen and traditional EV battery companies, with hundreds of employees in the US and Europe losing their jobs. Call it new industry growing pains: Companies are struggling to bridge the gap between early-stage products and the high-volume production that will be needed down the line, reports The Information. Battery makers also are looking to save cash as costs surge and investors move their funding to less risky prospects.
Earlier this week, we covered Michigan-based EV battery startup ONE, Our Next Energy, cutting its workforce by 25% as part of a “revised business plan,” according to the company. The company, headquartered in Novi, a suburb of Detroit, announced that it has cut 128 salaried and hourly workers from its staff of roughly 500 people. The company kept the reasoning succinct, noting that the decision was “in response to market conditions.”
South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, which supplies batteries to Tesla and GM, laid off 170 workers last week at its Michigan plant, up to 10% of its staff. Ford supplier SK On has also laid off more than 100 workers at its plant in Georgia in September, as has Ford, which last month laid off 700 workers while scaling back production of the F-150 Lightening pickup. SK On also plans to delay the launch of its second plant in Kentucky, which is a joint venture with Ford and expected to be up and running by 2026.
Another next-gen player, Freye Battery also laid off 78 staff members from plants in Norway and Georgia, and Enovix slashed 185 workers in Fremont, California, from its payroll, moving those operations to Malaysia. Freyr saw the loss of its COO, Jan Arve Haugan, who resigned last week.
Companies are struggling to “bridge a gap between current early-stage products and high-volume production later this decade,” The Information says. Large battery makers are dependent on actual EV sales to increase production, while next-gen battery makers are often still in pilot mode or have yet to ramp up any of their early-phase products, and won’t be doing so for years to come.
ONE, for example, is one of many such companies in the US working on manufacturing LFP battery cells and developing a domestic battery supply chain to benefit from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Led by former Apple executive Mujeeb Ijaz, ONE is now delivering prototype versions of lithium iron phosphate battery packs to several companies for testing, with the aim of producing battery cells next year at a new $1.6 billion factory in Van Buren Township, Michigan. But it needs a lot of cash to make this happen.
Even Tesla has hinted at delaying plans for its Giga Mexico, with CEO Elon Musk saying in its Q3 earnings call that he wanted “to just get a sense for the global economy is like before we go full tilt on the Mexico factory. I am worried about the high-interest rate environment that we’re in.”
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China just connected its largest single-capacity solar farm built on a former coal mining area, which is in the Gobi Desert, to the grid.
The Mengxi Blue Ocean Photovoltaic Power Station, located in Otog Front Banner, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, came online on November 5. With a massive installed capacity of 3 gigawatts (GW) and over 5.9 million solar panels, the plant will generate around 5.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually – enough to power 2 million households.
This huge project will save about 1.71 million tons of standard coal each year and cut carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 4.7 million tons, which is equivalent to planting 62,700 hectares (around 155,000 acres) of trees.
Built on coal mining subsidence land, Mengxi Blue Ocean is part of China’s national West-East Electricity Transfer Project, which brings investment and development to western China west while supplying the growing need for electricity in the eastern provinces.
The solar farm includes the country’s first large-scale outdoor solar testing base in the Gobi Desert climate, demonstrating the potential for large solar installations in challenging environments.
The power station makes use of new rare earth alloy grounding materials, cutting costs by 40%. It also replaces traditional concrete foundations with steel to minimize impact on the local grassland ecosystem.
Chuang Xihong, deputy director of the Engineering Construction Department of Guodian Power Group, CHN Energy’s parent company, explained that Mengxi Blue Ocean is an agrivoltaic project as well [via PV Tech]:
Fine forage and sand-fixing plants are planted under the PV modules, providing grazing for Australian White Sheep and chickens. A composite ecological development model will be established where PV power generation and breeding will go hand in hand.
Read more: China powers up the world’s largest open-sea offshore solar farm
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