Experts agree: with a lithium-ion battery, Northvolt is banking on good technology for its plant in Quebec. That said, the type of cathode chosen by the multinational risks losing market share by 2030. The plant will nevertheless not be a prisoner of its initial technological choice.
“Their choice is excellent,” says Karim Zaghib, a professor at Concordia University and a leading authority on research on batteries in Quebec. “Lithium-ion batteries will still exist in 100 years,” adds the former general director of Hydro-Québec’s Center of Excellence in Transport Electrification and Energy Storage.
The battery maker has been facing headwinds in recent months. In June, BMW canceled a nearly $3 billion contract. This week, Northvolt laid off 1,600 employees in Sweden. Around the world, electric vehicle sales are growing, but not as fast as they were three years ago.
Karim Zaghib believes that, despite the upheavals affecting Northvolt, the lithium-ion battery that the multinational wants to produce in McMasterville and Saint-Basile-le-Grand using local minerals and clean energy will not fail to find buyers in the context of the energy transition. “They are not wrong,” he says.
The advantage of lithium comes from its chemical nature: it is the smallest metallic element in the universe. Therefore, a huge number of lithium ions (electrically charged atoms) can be packed into a battery. This allows a lot of energy to be stored in a small space.
Two types
Technologically mature, the lithium-ion battery dominates the markets of electronic devices, electric vehicles and energy storage. There are two main types of lithium-ion batteries, depending on the composition of their cathode: NMC (nickel, manganese, cobalt) and LFP (lithium, iron, phosphate).
In its Swedish factory, Northvolt already manufactures NMC batteries. These offer excellent energy density. The company plans to produce the same type of battery in Quebec. As for LFP technology, adopted in 2023 by Tesla for its standard models, it is a little less efficient, but also less expensive. The iron and phosphate that compose it are more affordable.
From a manufacturing standpoint, these two types of lithium-ion batteries are very similar. The same machines are used to make them. Switching from one technology to the other would create “no problem,” says Zaghib, optimistically.
“You can switch from one type of cathode to another without a lot of modifications,” confirms Steen Schougaard, a chemistry professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal and a battery specialist. However, the transition of a “gigafactory” would not happen instantly, he warns. “To produce hundreds of batteries per minute, the factory has to be extremely optimized.”
Chemistry professor Mickaël Dollé, also a battery specialist, also emphasizes the technical difficulties that the transition from NMC technology to LFP technology would represent. Converting the plant would take many months, or even more than a year, according to the researcher at the Comtois Institute of the University of Montreal.
For the past two years, LFP lithium-ion batteries have been gaining ground at a rapid pace. Chinese manufacturer CATL has improved the performance of its LFP batteries by changing the design of the cells. “This has made it possible to remove connections, remove dead weight, remove wiring to increase the battery capacity while reducing its cost,” explains Mr. Dollé.
As a result, automakers are stepping up to buy such batteries. In June, Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis suspended development of two megafactories in Europe for NMC batteries. Both auto giants are weighing their options for buying cells with iron phosphate cathodes instead.
That said, no one doubts that NMC lithium-ion batteries will still play an important role in the market in 2030. “They will be intended for slightly more luxurious vehicles,” Dollé believes. Heavy SUVs, for example, will need such batteries.
A logical choice
In lithium-ion batteries, the two electrodes sandwich a conductive liquid solution — the electrolyte. The lithium ions bathe in it. As they charge and discharge, they pass from one electrode to the other, crossing a thin porous membrane where only they can slip.
Since 2022, another type of battery – sodium-ion – has been carving out a place in the market, particularly in China.
As the name of this battery suggests, sodium ions act as energy matchmakers. Sodium, which is abundant in our salt shakers, is less expensive than lithium, but it does not allow for the manufacture of batteries that are as energy-dense. Too bulky for vehicles, sodium-ion batteries will likely be used to store solar and wind energy.
Again, nothing would prevent Northvolt’s Quebec plant from orchestrating a transition to this technology if it became more advantageous in a decade or two.
For Northvolt, choosing an NMC lithium-ion battery for the Quebec plant was a logical choice, says Professor Schougaard. “You don’t build a plant that costs billions of dollars without having confidence in your know-how regarding the chosen technology.”
Northvolt’s project aims for an annual production capacity of 60 gigawatt hours (GWh), enough to manufacture around one million electric vehicles per year. By 2023, global lithium-ion battery production will have exceeded 2,200 GWh.