Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many plants in the UK produce batteries for ultra low emission vehicles; and how many new such factories he estimates will be established in the next two years.

The UK has excellent capability in various aspects of the lithium ion battery supply chain and manufacturing process, and it also has a large scale automotive battery plant (current capacity around 2GWh per year), which was the first in Europe, in Sunderland owned by AESC (Nissan). This provides batteries for the Nissan Leaf, Europe’s best selling electric vehicle, (as well as the eNV200 van) and meets the majority of current UK assembled electrified vehicle battery demands with UK built batteries.

Other UK companies are currently providing small scale specialist cells (AGM) or are assembling battery modules and packs from cells – including McLaren Applied Technologies, Williams Automotive Engineering, Cummins, RML, Hyperdrive, Delta, Ricardo, Potenza, Axeon. The UK also has emerging battery capability such as Johnson Matthey’s recent announcement of a UK demonstration plant that will aim to commercialise its new cathode technology

The UK is well placed to grow this existing battery industry supported by the £246m Faraday Battery Challenge, as part of our Industrial Strategy, delivering new skills, innovations, and scale-up capability for UK companies.