Chinese Battery Maker Scraps Plans For Two German Factories As EV Demand Weakens | Carscoops

The Chinese company reportedly doesn't have the financial resources to continue with its European expansion

Chinese EV battery maker SVOLT has announced it will shutter its European operations in January and abandon plans for two production facilities, blaming slumping sales across Europe and rising trade tensions for the abrupt pullout.

Originally spun off from Great Wall Motors’ battery division, SVOLT now aims to refocus its European presence around technical services, warehousing, engineering support, logistics, and maintenance. In other words, it’s downsizing from ambitious manufacturing to just enough infrastructure to maintain a foothold in the region, but the shift signals a major retreat from its initial production-heavy aspirations.

Read: BMW Cancels €2 Billion Battery Deal With Northvolt Due To Delays

The move kills off two planned plants in Germany—a module and pack assembly facility in Saarland and a cell manufacturing plant in Brandenburg. The pack plant was first announced in late 2020 and included a €2 billion ($2.16 billion) investment. It was supposed to manufacture up to 24 GHw of packs each year and begin operations by mid-2024 but had been delayed. The battery cell plant was announced in 2022 and would have been SVOLT’s first overseas cell factory. It had planned to begin production in 2025.

Despite being China’s eighth-largest battery producer with a 2.36% share of the local market, SVOLT has been struggling to gain traction both at home and abroad. Financial constraints seem to be the root of the problem. It had planned to go public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market in late 2022 but these plans were officially scrapped in December last year.

Currently, SVOLT is known to supply battery packs Citroen e-C3, and while limited other details about supply contracts in Europe are known, Rho Motion suggests that it may have had a contract with BMW to supply batteries.

Other battery manufacturers are struggling to establish themselves in Europe. In September, Volvo’s joint venture alongside Northvolt asked the Swedish government for $1.2 billion in funding to help it complete construction of its plant in Gothenburg. This plea came just months after BMW canceled a €2 billion order for battery cells from the Swedish firm.

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