Electric Vehicles: Batteries

(asked on 25th February 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to facilitate the development of domestic manufacturing capacity for electric vehicle batteries.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 2nd March 2020

The Government has a long-standing programme of support to maintain the competitiveness of the UK automotive sector. Through the Automotive Sector Deal, we are working with the industry to develop world-leading battery technologies.

We have already invested £274 million in the Faraday Battery Challenge (FBC) through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. Faraday is a cutting-edge programme, helping UK businesses to lead the world in the design, development, and manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles. Under the FBC, we have invested £120 million in the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) which will open in 2020 and provide a state-of-the-art pilot facility to test new cell technology. UKBIC will play a key role in laying the groundwork to secure a battery Gigafactory in the UK.

In October 2019, the Government announced up to £1 billion of additional funding to develop UK supply chains for the large-scale production of, and research and development for, electric vehicles.

Reticulating Splines