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Peter Carlson (Peter Carlsson), co-founder and CEO of Northvolt, a Swedish electric car battery maker, announced his resignation on November 22nd local time. After his resignation, he will become a senior consultant and continue to serve on the board of directors. Northvolt is currently looking for a new chief executive.

The move comes a day after Northvolt filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States and will seek restructuring under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy law. In accordance with Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy Law, Northvolt can be reorganized within a period of time to expand its operations while fulfilling the commitments of customers and suppliers, and finally achieve long-term positioning, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year.

Northvolt said it had $30 million in cash in its account and could only support its operations for a week or so. Northvolt, which currently has $5.8 billion in debt, will receive about $145 million in cash collateral and $100m in new financing to ease the crisis to keep its business running during bankruptcy. Northvolt is scheduled to deliver products to customers such as Volkswagen, BMW, Scania and Volvo and pay major suppliers during the bankruptcy.

On filing for bankruptcy protection, Tom Johnstone, interim chairman of Northvolt's board of directors, said: "this decision will enable Northvolt to continue its mission of establishing a local European battery production industrial base. Despite short-term challenges, this move to strengthen the capital structure will enable it to capture the continuing market demand for car electrification." In addition, Carlson, who has resigned as CEO, said the decision was an important new phase for himself and for Northvolt. Carlson revealed that Northvolt would need to raise $1 billion to $1.2 billion (about 7.248 billion to 8.697 billion yuan) to resume operations, noting that the company was working to increase production.

Northvolt was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, and is co-founded by Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs and Siemens. At that time, the former Tesla global supply chain director Peter Carlson (Peter Carlsson) returned to his hometown of Sweden and then founded Northovolt. From the time of its establishment, Northvolt has not been established for a long time, only about 6 years, but it is a star enterprise in the European battery industry and plays an important role in shaping the electric vehicle industry and establishing an independent supply chain of electric vehicle battery in Europe. Therefore, European authorities and automobile industry attach great importance to it. And give strong support. In addition, it also received investment from BMW, Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs, Spotify and other well-known companies, and received a private equity investment of up to $2.75 billion in June 2021. According to incomplete statistics, more than ten rounds of financing have been obtained since the establishment of Northvolt, with a total amount of more than 15 billion US dollars.

Northvolt currently employs about 6600 people in seven countries. On September 23 this year, Northvolt announced that it would cut 1600 jobs at its Swedish base, accounting for about 1/5 of the global workforce, of which 1000 were laid off at the Sherefteo super factory. More worryingly, Northvolt also announced a suspension of plans for a massive expansion of its Northvolt Ett plant in Sherefteo, northern Sweden, and then in October Northvolt said its subsidiary Ett Expansion AB had filed for bankruptcy after the project it was developing was cancelled. Since then, Northvolt is in talks with investors and lenders to raise about 200m in short-term funds to maintain financial stability, according to people familiar with the matter.

Northvolt was once seen as the key to the European auto industry, and its move to file for bankruptcy protection in the United States also reflects to some extent the challenges facing the European auto industry. The current situation of Northvolt is already very critical. Northvolt lost $1.2 billion (about 8.7 billion yuan) in 2023 and $285 million (2.07 billion yuan) in 2022, according to the report. As for its follow-up development, "Automotive Industry concern" will also continue to pay attention.

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