Peter Carlsson on battery manufacturing strategy
From Lessons from Peter Carlsson after the Rise and Fall of Northvolt · · MCJ
“If you combine this, if you do this vertical integration, you do it at scale, and you do it in an energy setup that is favorable where you have energy costs at 2 euro cents per kilowatt hour, then you can actually offset the whole labor arbitrage, and in the outcome of this, you could also produce the greenest battery on Earth where a carbon footprint would be 20% of the equivalent Asian one.”
On , Peter Carlsson, CEO & Co-Founder at Northvolt, spoke about battery manufacturing strategy during Lessons from Peter Carlsson after the Rise and Fall of Northvolt on MCJ.
About Peter Carlsson
Peter Carlsson, co-founder and former CEO of Northvolt, discussed the company's bankruptcy and his subsequent ventures in a May 2026 interview. He stated that Northvolt filed for bankruptcy at the end of 2024 after raising over $13 billion. Carlsson said that in the months following the bankruptcy, he co-founded RS Machina, an agentic operating system for manufacturing, and Sonder Labs, a company focused on sodium battery technology. He noted that Sonder Labs was created with the former leader of Northvolt's R&D team, Andreas Haas, and that they are currently working with India. Carlsson offered several observations about European industrial competitiveness. He said that "Europe needs to decide where and how to compete or partner with the Chinese electro-industrial stack, which is getting better, faster, and cheaper every day." He also questioned whether Europe can maintain its current regulatory environment, stating that "it is three and a half times more expensive to build a battery factory in Europe than it is in China." Reflecting on Northvolt's collapse, Carlsson said the company made a bet to cut 25% of expenses outside the gigafactory while hoping to secure additional funding, adding that "in hindsight, obviously that bet didn't fall out." He expressed optimism about Europe's future, saying he sees "really good opportunities" in hardware and the green transition.