Peter Carlsson, former CEO of the bankrupt Northvolt, believes that the media portrayal of both himself and the company does not reflect reality.
Northvolt's former CEO has barely been seen lately. The last interview Peter Carlsson gave was on March 12 this year, after the bankruptcy announcement. That time, he stormed out of the press conference after being asked about the 200 million kronor he sold Northvolt shares for.
– An incredibly stupid question, Carlsson said before leaving.
Now he has agreed to meet Norran in a startup space on Luntmakargatan in Stockholm. He spends quite a lot of time here nowadays, as he and a former Northvolt employee have started a company developing AI tools to optimise manufacturing processes.
He sits down in the conference room with a half-eaten kebab in hand, apologises for munching because he needed to eat something, and says between bites that he is working on "his own timeline," which might become a book.
He feels that what has been portrayed in the media so far does not reflect the reality as it was.
– This was unique; so many skilled people gathered in one place, working on something so complicated, and they got so far. Then it's described as a dangerous factory, a castle in the air, and that the products did not meet standards. The people who say that, are people who do not know what actually happened, he says.
So, what really happened? That is the biggest question we take with us to Stockholm. We won't have time to ask all our questions, because when Peter Carlsson starts talking, he talks and will not be interrupted.
At first, he is cautious, but then he starts talking about the early days, before the decision about where the factory would be located was even made. A light slowly spreads across his face as he recalls the sign that greeted him and a colleague when they drove in from the airport to Skellefteå.
– We stopped suddenly and reversed. There it said: "Welcome Northvolt".
Today the welcome might be a little different. The time since the bankruptcy has been hard; thousands lost their jobs, many have been forced to leave Skellefteå, and unemployment has increased. The consequences for both individuals and the municipality are obvious.
– I understand that people are angry and disappointed. I am also angry and incredibly disappointed that we are where we are. Ending up in this situation was the worst thing that could happen. So I 100 percent understand that feeling of anger and disappointment, says Carlsson.
One reason for Northvolt’s bankruptcy, according to Peter Carlsson, is that the main owners lost confidence in the company.
So how did it come to this? Many have opinions about the reasons for Northvolt's bankruptcy: poor management, too rapid expansion, wrong technology, or that China was simply too far ahead in the EV market. According to Carlsson himself, it is a combination of several factors, too complex to answer in one sentence.
– If you really want to simplify the question, you could say the delay in Skellefteå, at the same time as the electric car market started to falter, made the main owners lose trust in the company. One main owner influenced the other, and when they did not want to put in more money, the other investors also got worried. The extensive negative reporting in the media also made investors nervous, and they felt the risk was too high. Then we tried through reconstruction to build a new capital or ownership structure for the company. But we did not have enough time or capital to do that.
Was your timeline realistic from the start?
– In hindsight, it was certainly ambitious. Then there were also things we had not counted on when building the factory. That there would be a COVID pandemic with a global logistics crisis, making it very difficult to get materials and components to Europe. And also the challenges of getting subcontractors to finish installations and software configurations on site.
Alongside building the research facility in Västerås and raising money for the Skellefteå factory, Northvolt also started many other projects and collaborations. Among other things, they built systems for battery storage, started a collaboration on a lithium refinery in Portugal, launched the recycling project Revolt, and drew up plans for more factories.
Northvolt Dwa in Poland, one of Northvolt’s earliest projects.
Northvolt and Volvo Cars had planned a battery factory in Gothenburg, but when Northvolt ran into financial problems, Volvo bought them out.
Northvolt Drei is located in Heide, Germany, and has been a major project Northvolt has worked on with Volkswagen. What will happen with it now is unclear.
When asked if Northvolt had taken on too many projects before it had learned to manufacture batteries, Carlsson said he saw it as a natural consequence. When one construction team finished a site, they moved on to the next. The same with the process team. "Sequential thinking," he calls it.
– So from our perspective, it was seen as a natural ramp-up of what we'd built, he says.
Many people are curious why you didn't focus on establishing battery production initially.
– That is of course a relevant opinion, but we had worked for several years refining production and products in Västerås before they came to Skellefteå. Ramping up Skellefteå was the focus then. But one could very well say that when the ramp-up was delayed, all other projects should have been postponed as well.
The battery factory area in Skellefteå is large. 3,000 people worked there.
The reason the projects were not postponed, according to Carlsson, was that they believed they would solve the bottlenecks, even though they had large customer commitments and inflexible financing. Big decisions needed approval from financiers, which sometimes took months. At the same time, customers, the car manufacturers buying Northvolt's battery cells, had ambitious demands on cell design and performance.
– Big car customers are maybe the toughest customers; they have very large resources to go into detail with subcontractors. And when the timeline was postponed, they wanted to send more resources to Skellefteå, including quality engineers to evaluate the work and progress. That meant we needed teams matching theirs, making presentations and taking care of them on site.
Did you feel you couldn't say no, when they were both co-owners and customers?
– It was obviously a tough situation to handle. The problem was saying no when we were delayed, which made them apply even more pressure on us. It created additional complexity managing teams in Skellefteå, while handling installation and ramp-up. It made it harder for teams to fully focus on what was important. Because they always had to take care of the customer, Carlsson explains.
When Northvolt’s timeline was delayed, customers began to apply pressure and sent teams to Skellefteå.
"That made it harder for our teams to fully focus on what really mattered," says Carlsson.
Peter Carlsson stops short of saying they should have postponed the Skellefteå factory's launch, but he does concede they made other errors.
The transition to large-scale manufacturing was difficult. But Carlsson stops short of saying they should have postponed the start in Skellefteå, though they made other mistakes, such as having equipment delivered to Sweden before it was fully tested. In the end, this made it take longer to get the pilot line in the labs working, causing even more delays in Skellefteå.
– When we were building new lines in Asia and COVID came, we were under great time pressure. When we could no longer travel back and forth to inspect and do factory acceptance testing as planned, we decided to ship the lines even though they had not been fully run in China. And the supplier was to fix any problems on site. In hindsight, that was a big mistake.
But the supplier had people on site, so why didn't it work?
– Partly it's a matter of training the right personnel on how to handle the lines. Partly expectations about stability in the production process. It's a much more complex issue than just saying it didn't work. This is a system developed over time, and the delay is due to many factors.
On the way to the next meeting, this time about the sale of Northvolt Labs:
"I’ve tried to use my contacts and network to find solutions for the bankruptcy estate and Northvolt employees who need it."
One question sometimes raised in the debate is whether Skellefteå was the right place for the battery factory, mainly because of difficulties attracting the right skills. Carlsson stands by the choice, even if the distance between the Skellefteå factory and the Västerås research facility caused some challenges.
– The physical distance created a cultural and organisational distance. It wasn't straightforward to process and transfer process and product knowledge from Västerås to Skellefteå. We had continuous teams there, but it became a bit like "the team who lived there" and "the team who came Monday and left Thursday or Friday." And it was hard to fully integrate them.
If Peter Carlsson were to start the factory today, he would do some things differently, he says. Such as not bringing in machines that haven't been fully tested.
If Carlsson were to start the factory today, he says he would do some things differently. He would certainly not import machines that hadn't been fully tested, and he might also rethink simultaneously manufacturing battery cells, cathode material, and recycling batteries.
– If I were to start today, the sequence would probably look a bit different, but we believed in it strongly. One reason both customers and investors liked the idea of building cathode material and battery cells at the same site was the differentiation it gave. By placing both production parts in an energy area like Skellefteå, we actually had a chance to compete against the Asians. But in hindsight, we should have added more sequencing to the timeline and maybe involved partners more.
In autumn 2024 Northvolt had problems increasing production speed at the Skellefteå factory and so launched a project called "Path to 100K" to speed up production. But money was running out. An attempt to raise more capital during the summer failed – and the large green loan the company "secured" earlier in the year risked falling through.
Already in the first quarter the company had made a minor cutback, but in September the first big lay-off was announced. Two weeks later Expansion went bankrupt and in November Northvolt filed for reconstruction in a US court. The day after, Carlsson resigned as CEO. He says he thought they could manage the reconstruction and had a possible solution planned around Christmas.
– We really believed we could get out of reconstruction with a new setup, but then the money ran out. If we had had more time, I am quite convinced we would have solved it, but the money ran out. It was really, really tough, he says.
When did you realise it was over?
– When Tom Johnstone (Northvolt's chairman) called me at the end of January and told me a key player had dropped out. Then I realised we would not succeed. I became completely cold and empty. It was like a nightmare.
Peter Carlsson, founder and former CEO of Northvolt
Since the bankruptcy, Carlsson has maintained a low profile. He and his wife, Sofia Graflund, invested in the AI company Aris Machina, but he's made no public appearances. Carlsson says he hasn't "landed" yet, partly because he remains involved with Northvolt, and partly because he feels the media's criticism has been unfair. He also carries a heavy burden of guilt.
– Of course I do, he says. This is like losing a child. It's incredibly emotional. It's hard to come to terms with how things turned out.
Carlsson's hands move back and forth between the table and his face whenever emotions surface. He speaks more slowly, his gaze drifting away—perhaps to a memory, perhaps just considering what or how to say something.
– There have been very, very dark moments where I've wondered—is there... like, is there a way out of this? When Ivar Krüger’s business empire collapsed, he went to Paris and shot himself.
Was it that bad?
No, but... I had very, very dark thoughts and felt mentally very unwell—and in that perspective, also being questioned as some kind of charlatan. It hurt so incredibly much.
Peter Carlsson, founder and former CEO of Northvolt.
"Charlatan" and "fraudster" are labels Carlsson says have been used to describe him recently, especially given that he profited from the company despite its significant losses.
This brings us back to the question of the share sale – the very one an SVT reporter asked during the post-bankruptcy press conference that prompted Carlsson to walk out, shutting the door on Norran and other journalists eager for answers.
– Five years ago, when everyone wanted to invest in the company and people were eager to buy shares, I sold five percent of my shares to friends and a fund from the United Kingdom. When we were later forced into bankruptcy, people tried to portray that I sold at the expense of Swedish pension savers who lost money. That's simply not the case. In fact, I took a good portion of the money I sold for and reinvested it in Northvolt. I firmly believed in this project, says Carlsson.
Peter Carlsson, co-founder and former CEO of battery company Northvolt, speaks from Northvolt’s office in Stockholm following the company’s bankruptcy announcement.
Did you really think the question was irrelevant, though?
– Yes, in that situation, when we had such incredibly difficult news to share with those involved, I thought it was a very low-brow question. Instead of the important questions - what happens with Northvolt now, what happens with the employees, how can all of this continue to live on - the focus shifted to that. I understood then that when I responded that way, I'd have to live with it.
After the press conference, there have been no further interviews, until now.
– I feel very strongly for Skellefteå, and if there's anyone I should talk to about my feelings and thoughts on this, it's with the group that's been closest - which is the municipality, the region, and the people in Skellefteå.
Northvolt CEO Peter Carlsson visiting Skellefteå in September 2017 together with, among others, communications director Jesper Wigardt and project director Emad Zand.
Carlsson reveals that, since stepping down as CEO last November, he's been working behind the scenes to help the factory survive.
– I talk with the management team on a daily basis, even though I don't have a formal role, he explains.
– And I've tried to use my contacts and network to find solutions for the bankruptcy estate and Northvolt employees who need it. There are no incentives for me in this; it's purely to ensure a good outcome.
But you also received a salary until the bankruptcy and collected money through the wage guarantee scheme. Can you understand why that might attract criticism?
– That wasn't something I chose myself; it was a long series of payrolls that automatically went into a wage guarantee. I actually had no idea I would receive any final compensation, and I hadn't expected it.
Have you considered paying the money back, or doing something else charitable with it?
Among other things, I've spent quite a lot of money setting up an alumni network for Northvolt. It will be launched within a couple of weeks to keep people connected and find opportunities for employees. I'm trying to do my part.
News recently broke that Peter Carlsson has co-founded Aris Machina with a former Northvolt employee, attracting multi-million dollar investments to the new company.
Just last week, news broke that Carlsson, alongside a former Northvolt employee, Sid Khullar, launched Aris Machina, attracting multi-million investments to the company.
Some find it galling that you've managed to secure millions more in investments for your projects. What are your thoughts on that?
– Everyone is entitled to their opinion on it, he responds.
– But this team has managed to demonstrate incredibly unique expertise and an exciting business plan to numerous investors - why should anyone be angry about that? It creates new jobs in Sweden, opportunities for development. Why should anyone be envious of that?
The future of the Skellefteå factory remains uncertain. As of now, only one interested party remains, Northvolt's last customer, Scania, has found another battery supplier, and bankruptcy administrator Mikael Kubu has announced that the factory will close on July 1 if a buyer isn't found before then. Carlsson says he doesn't believe all hope is lost.
– Of course, every passing day without the bankruptcy administrator finding a solution makes one worried. But I truly hope from the bottom of my heart. Because production has been better than ever, the cost base is lower now than before—and you can actually buy this factory for a significantly smaller sum than what was invested in it.
We've overrun the allotted interview time. The 90 minutes we were given have stretched to over two hours, and Carlsson is getting restless; he's soon due at a meeting regarding the sale of Northvolt Labs in Västerås. He poses for a few extra pictures before standing up and answering the last questions, halfway out the door.
What would it take to get a battery factory running again?
– It's about continuing. It's incredibly important that Labs survives, because it's the only facility in the Western world that can develop battery products at the same level as CATL and Samsung. I truly hope that we manage to keep this ecosystem together, because no one is saying: "let's become 100 percent dependent on China for batteries." We started 10 years late, and it takes time to catch up.
"Skellefteå has given me so many fantastic memories, and I also think the city truly flourished during this period," says Peter Carlsson.
What would you like to say to all the people of Skellefteå who believed in this project?
– I want to thank them for the incredible support, dedication, and cooperation over these eight years. I've experienced so many fantastic moments in Skellefteå, and I truly believe Skellefteå also came alive during this period. I think it was a real symbiosis, and now we all need to help write the next chapter of this story. The climate crisis hasn’t gone away, and the fundamental need for sustainable batteries remains, even if the world is currently focused on other issues.
You mentioned wanting to say thank you – but there was also a bankruptcy and many people lost their jobs?
– It's incredibly sad, and it reminds me what a terrible year it has been. To live with that, to think of all those who have been affected by this. It's a huge burden. I find it terribly upsetting.
This interview with Peter Carlsson took place on May 21 of this year. A week later, on the same day the interview is to be published, he is undergoing police questioning. The prosecutor has notified him of suspicion of causing another's death through an occupational health and safety crime, following the explosion in 2023 that took the life of a 25-year-old employee.
"The accident that occurred in 2023 is incredibly tragic and sad. Otherwise, I await the investigation and have no further comments," writes Carlsson in a text message.