The British car industry depends "not Brexit, but batteries" | Environment

The feeling of relief in the British auto industry was almost palpable Friday, when Jaguar Land Rover announced that it would invest billions of dollars in the production of new electric vehicles in the UK. After the recent closure of two other British car factories in five months – Honda to Swindon and Ford to Bridgend -, JLR boss Ralf Speth was clearly delighted to have good news for the 2,500 workers in the company. 39, Castle Bromwich factory.

Despite these congratulations, Speth also issued a warning note. Not on Brexit this time, but on the future of the automotive sector in the absence of a British battery industry. "One thing is clear: if the batteries come out of the UK, auto production will also go from the UK," he said.

The combination of Volkswagen's diesel emissions fraud scandal, Tesla's entry, and imminent decarbonization targets has pushed carmakers into the development of lithium-ion battery powered vehicles.

BMW will launch this week its new electric mini, which will be manufactured in Oxford, and the PSA group said that if an unbridged Brexit was avoided, he would build his new Vauxhall Astra cars at Ellesmere Port, with electric versions to follow.

It remains to be seen where the batteries will be purchased. A new JLR facility at Hams Hall, between Coventry and Birmingham, will import battery cells from Asia to bademble into packaging, while BMW will import packaging from Germany.

Opportunities for a global industry experiencing explosive growth are enormous – and without the battery industry, the 114,000 workers who make the UK's combustion engines could disappear by 2040, warns the Faraday Institution, backed by the government.

At that time, the United Kingdom will need an annual battery capacity of up to 200 gigawatt hours (GWh), 100 times more than current production, if it fully seizes the opportunity to manufacture batteries for its 1.8 million vehicles, provides the institution Faraday. That would be equivalent to what Tesla's founder, Elon Musk, called "gigafactories," that is, capable of generating 15 GWh per year or more.

The Advanced Propulsion Center (APC), a Coventry-based system to invest £ 1 billion in public and private investment in clean car technologies, says it would cost roughly the same to build a single gigafactory.

Ian Constance, a former chief executive of Ford at Ford, said he wanted to "concert the process" to create an adequate supply chain, allowing the UK to take precedence over its rivals.

Its mandate is to preserve 30,000 British jobs by 2023 (as well as prevent 50 million tons of CO₂ emissions), so he wants to get the most out of the UK battery value chain. According to Constance, it would be logical for the future UK Electric Vehicle (EV) industry to also procure batteries in the UK.

"If you want to manufacture EVs in volume, shipping tons of batteries from Asia will give you a very long and expensive supply chain, with stocks of millions of pounds," he said.

The UK has already missed a shot for having a world-leading battery industry. The lithium-ion battery was invented at Oxford University in the late 1970s, but Sony, Japan, eventually commercialized the technology.

For Mark Amor-Segan, Chief Engineer at the University of Warwick's Energy Innovation Center, this is a "disaster" for the UK, one of the key sites tinkering with chemical blends. batteries and the arcana of welding pack in power.

Some battery factories already exist in the UK, but on a smaller scale. The packs for the Nissan Leaf are produced by AESC in Sunderland. Hyperbat, a Williams Group joint venture known for manufacturing Unipart components and components, has redeveloped a former car exhaust plant to produce low-volume batteries for sports cars like the Aston Martin Rapide E the Lotus Evija.

Paul McNamara, technical director of Williams Advanced Engineering, said that gigafactories in the UK would make sense only if it provided production in the UK, which means that one of the big manufacturers would have to To hire to buy in Britain.

"The danger we face in the UK is that even though a champion like JLR says we 're going to have electricity, it' s not that hard to import since then. other countries, "he said.

The threat to British jobs if major automakers do not engage automakers has already been underlined this year after Ford announced last month the closure of its Bridgend combustion engine plant. Union representatives have called for investments to modernize the plant for the use of new electric technologies, but Ford said that battery production would only be located near car plants.

"If we want to keep the badembly operations here, we need battery facilities," said Steve Turner, deputy union union general secretary for manufacturing. "We have to fight for future investments to make sure the country stays in the UK."

The stakes are high: China has already spent billions of dollars to subsidize its electric vehicle industry and the German government would have earmarked 1 billion euros (960 million pounds sterling) for support. a consortium seeking to produce electric car battery cells.

Some in the industry are skeptical that investments in smaller projects in Britain will be sufficient, especially because of the uncertainty surrounding Brexit. However, APC Constance is confident in the boom of the British battery industry – even though discussions with potential gigafactory investors are still in the months ahead.

"We have to have something here by the middle of the next decade," he says. "There is so much potential demand in the market, but it costs a lot of money."