The world has a problem.
I mean, alongside the ones we’ve already got.
We need to cut our carbon emissions and as part of that many governments have announced
dates to ban the sale of new diesel or petrol cars, shifting us onto electric.
Those cars run on batteries, which are made in massive gigafactories like this and we
need more of them. A lot more.
If almost every new car sold is going to be electric then we need to massively up our
battery production capabilities.
Construction now needs to get really good at building gigafactories and building them quickly.
Once again, a key part of our future progress on this planet,
kind of sits in the hands of this industry.
About a fifth of all CO2 emissions come from transport and road vehicles are by far the
worst offenders, so that shift to electric vehicles has got to happen - along with more
use of public transport, 15 minute cities, sustainable construction, rethinking air travel,
urban greening, recycling and us actually listening to David Attenborough.
“What happens next is up to every one of us.”
Now, there are many hurdles to overcome before we all go out and buy an electric car.
They’re expensive, there aren’t enough places to charge them right now and a lot
of people aren’t fully convinced of the benefits yet.
That’s all being steadily tackled, but battery production capacity is one of the biggest problems.
As you probably know, instead of an internal combustion engine, electric vehicles run on batteries.
Not AAs - the advanced lithium-ion cells that power electric vehicles
are quite a bit more sophisticated than that.
For the electric car revolution to happen, we need to make way more of these.
In just 15 years, global demand for electric vehicles is expected to overtake that of normal
cars, so battery production needs to increase six-fold by 2030.
The good news is that this maturing of the market will ultimately bring costs down and
make owning an electric vehicle something most of us can actually afford.
To do that, we’ve got to build a whole new kind of production facility known as the gigafactory.
It’s a term you’ve probably already heard of already thanks to Tesla.
First used by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, ‘giga’ is a nod to Tesla’s original
aim of producing 35 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity each year, and factory means, well, factory.
Forget shopping malls or fossil fuel power stations, the construction industry now needs
to get really good at building these factories if the world stands a hope
of shifting to electric cars on time.
So what gigafactories exist already and what can we learn from them?
You won’t be surprised to know that Tesla now has a few under its belt.
The firm started with its Nevada gigafactory and has two more up and running
in New York and Shanghai.
Another two are also under construction right now in Texas and Berlin.
The company has been building these at breakneck speed using a combination of prefabricated
parts, a standardised approach and digital technologies - as we explained over on The
B1M back in 2020.
They’re seemingly getting quicker at them too, learning from previous builds and
constantly streamlining their operation.
Most of Tesla’s factories are easily expandable; designed and built in a way that allows them
to add extensions as demand increases.
Tesla is not the only one building gigafactories - in fact, far from it.
While the US firm currently tops the list of electric car manufacturers overall, more
than three quarters of the world’s batteries are actually made in the Asia-Pacific region
– 70% in China alone.
But it’s Europe where most of the action is right now; several tech companies and new
competitors are setting up shop in a bid to gain a share of this lucrative market and
beat Tesla at its own gigafactory game - all good news generally for the advancement of
electric cars and the construction industry.
Now, the continent already has some gigafactories - including LG Chem’s one in Poland and
Korean manufacturer SK Innovation’s factory in Hungary -
but recently things have started moving up a gear.
Swedish firm Northvolt, co-founded by two former Tesla employees (which is kinda awkward),
actually looks set to become one of the greatest threats to the current big players in batteries.
Based near Stockholm, the start-up is building a massive new plant in Skelleftea, a small
town just outside the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden.
Described by the firm as Europe’s first “homegrown” gigafactory, Northvolt Ett
is set to cover more than 500,000 square metres when fully operational.
Production is due to get underway by the end of 2021 and Northvolt wants to provide a quarter
of Europe’s batteries - enough for 300,000 vehicles per year in the first phase, which
could rise to one million a year down the line.
Volkswagen has already lined-up Northvolt to supply it with batteries for the next ten
years and it’s now teamed up with Volvo on a new R&D centre. They've even secured major
investment from truck and bus giant Scania.
The firm isn’t just helping the environment by supplying parts for emission-free vehicles;
it’s trying to make “the world’s greenest batteries.”
Equipment in the factory will be powered by hydroelectric energy generated in the nearby
river, many of the raw materials will be sourced locally and it is also planning to recycle
batteries on site in the future.
That’s good news, because while gigafactories are enabling electric car travel, in our view
that’s no excuse for not building the factories themselves in a sustainable way and then running
them on renewable power.
So far there aren’t many examples of gigafactories that have done that, if any.
We have sustainable building techniques, we know how to generate renewable power and these
projects have enormous budgets.
Elsewhere in Europe, Chinese firm SVOLT has invested $2.4BN in two new production facilities
on the German-French border, including a state-of-the-art cell factory with 24GWh capacity.
The UK’s first gigafactory is also about to start construction on the site of an old
power station in Northumberland after the land was acquired in April 2021.
Run by Britishvolt, another start-up, the $3.6BN plant is expected to supply batteries
for 300,000 electric vehicles each year by 2027.
Also in the North East, Nissan has just announced plans to build a $1.4BN gigafactory close
to its existing car plant in Sunderland.
On top of all that, there are thought to be at least 20 more gigafactories currently in
the works across Europe.
But it’s not just the full new builds that construction needs to crack.
Many car manufacturers are now revamping their factories, winding-down their petrol and diesel
lines and replacing them with electric assembly lines or are even converting conventional
factories to gigafactories in some instances, like at Mercedes.
Volkswagen converted its enormous Zwickau factory to electric in 2019 and it’s now
doing the same to its Emden plant, where it one day plans to build all of its electric models.
This is the thing. Almost every massive car production site you know of today will have
to be closed or converted to an electric plant if more and more governments keep planning
to ban the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles toward the end of the decade.
That’s a huge new market sector for construction that just didn’t exist a few years back
and it’s an area of expertise that’s now expected from our industry.
Tomorrow’s build, almost certainly involves a gigafactory.
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