Not too big a surprise, someone I know involved the automotive sector told me last year that nearly all the big car manufacturers in the UK already had their battery supply chain in place and that Britishvolt didn’t have a single major contract. JLR was their best bet but another company was looking at building a factory in Coventry.
Edit: typos
It’s a shame because having a Public owned battery/green energy manufacturer would be a strategic asset.
[deleted]
Ffs I was looking forward to this for the local economy
I’ve been thinking this whole thing is a scam from day 1.
The government shouldn’t back sketchy ventures like this where the founders have no meaningful experience and all want to be billionaires.
The government should just build its own plant directly.
I’d like to have a British battery manufacturer but this whole thing seems badly managed with ambitions dependent on billions in funding that they’ve obviously been unable to raise.
I did a bit of internet research and, as well as the one founder leaving as mentioned in the article, another one of the founders stood down after it was discovered he was convicted of tax fraud in Sweden. He’s since set up two new companies, Italvolt (in Italy) and Statevolt (in the U.S.). I’m definitely a cynic, it reminds me of the monorail guy from The Simpsons.
Hardly surprising, this is what happens when the government starts throwing money around in competitive industries. Ah well, it was a good news story for the government while it lasted, just another loss to the tax payer
So turns out the tax payer has not paid anything yet
However, Britishvolt has not yet received the money, which was earmarked for tooling within the factory, which has not been bought.
White Elephant project. All of the tooling/robotics for the factory would be sourced from Germany or Japan. Existing battery chemistry relies heavily on resources none of which are locally producible/minable. China basically has worldwide battery manufacture sewn up. The U.S are now adding their own manufacturing capability (at massive scale) with the vertical integration of mining their own U.S lithium. Commercially the UK cannot compete with any of this. UK Gov shouldn’t throw good money after bad.
I wonder if a law change would help? Insisting that 30% of the value of imported cars should be sourced from within UK would go a long way. Europe has similar rules. Or allowing electric vehicles to be sold here but *batteries not included.
I can’t believe they called it British Volt, when Volta isn’t British and volt is a unit of potential energy. They should have called it British Joule which is unit of energy and Joule was British
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Not too big a surprise, someone I know involved the automotive sector told me last year that nearly all the big car manufacturers in the UK already had their battery supply chain in place and that Britishvolt didn’t have a single major contract. JLR was their best bet but another company was looking at building a factory in Coventry.
Edit: typos
It’s a shame because having a Public owned battery/green energy manufacturer would be a strategic asset.
[deleted]
Ffs I was looking forward to this for the local economy
I’ve been thinking this whole thing is a scam from day 1.
The government shouldn’t back sketchy ventures like this where the founders have no meaningful experience and all want to be billionaires.
The government should just build its own plant directly.
I’d like to have a British battery manufacturer but this whole thing seems badly managed with ambitions dependent on billions in funding that they’ve obviously been unable to raise.
I did a bit of internet research and, as well as the one founder leaving as mentioned in the article, another one of the founders stood down after it was discovered he was convicted of tax fraud in Sweden. He’s since set up two new companies, Italvolt (in Italy) and Statevolt (in the U.S.). I’m definitely a cynic, it reminds me of the monorail guy from The Simpsons.
Hardly surprising, this is what happens when the government starts throwing money around in competitive industries. Ah well, it was a good news story for the government while it lasted, just another loss to the tax payer
So turns out the tax payer has not paid anything yet
However, Britishvolt has not yet received the money, which was earmarked for tooling within the factory, which has not been bought.
White Elephant project. All of the tooling/robotics for the factory would be sourced from Germany or Japan. Existing battery chemistry relies heavily on resources none of which are locally producible/minable. China basically has worldwide battery manufacture sewn up. The U.S are now adding their own manufacturing capability (at massive scale) with the vertical integration of mining their own U.S lithium. Commercially the UK cannot compete with any of this. UK Gov shouldn’t throw good money after bad.
I wonder if a law change would help? Insisting that 30% of the value of imported cars should be sourced from within UK would go a long way. Europe has similar rules. Or allowing electric vehicles to be sold here but *batteries not included.
I can’t believe they called it British Volt, when Volta isn’t British and volt is a unit of potential energy. They should have called it British Joule which is unit of energy and Joule was British