Siemens is partnering with Northvolt for its battery cell gigafactory in Europe

Northvolt has been lining up some impressive partners to help them built their ambitious project of a large battery gigafactory in Europe.

German engineering firm Siemens is the latest to jump on board with a new investment and partnership.

Northvolt is a company founded by two former Tesla executives who broke out on their own to build a battery gigafactory in Europe.

They’ve recently secured a $68 million loan from InnovFin – EU Finance for Innovators’ Energy Demonstration Projects facility.

It followed another investment from VW’s Scania and a manufacturing partnership with ABB.

Now Siemens, an important competitor of ABB, is also participating in the project with a 10 million euro investment announced today.

Furthermore, Siemens will offer Northvolt its “Digital Enterprise portfolio that enables the digitization of the entire value chain – from the design of the battery cell to production and services.”

Jan Mrosik, CEO of Siemens Digital Factory Division, commented:

“We are happy to support Northvolt in building the battery factory of the future. With our Digital Enterprise portfolio, we contribute to a competitive battery cell production in Europe that fully exploits the benefits of software and automation: greater flexibility, efficiency and quality with shorter time to market”,

Siemens also says that it intends to eventually buys batteries from Northvolt’s factory.

As we reported last month, Northvolt started construction on first phase of its planned battery gigafactory in Sweden.

The first phase will have a production capacity of 125 MWh per year, which they will then expand for the battery gigafactory.

The factory is expected to start production in 2020 with a target capacity of 8 GWh per year and they will aim for 32 GWh of capacity once the entire factory will be completed in 2023.

It would make it the biggest li-ion battery factory in Europe and comparable in size to the first phase of Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada. Peter Carlsson, Founder and CEO of Northvolt, and Paolo Cerruti, COO of Northvolt, both worked on the Gigafactory 1 project.