battery revolution
the political and industrial will to make it
13 May 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk
With EV makers increasingly keen
to co-locate ba ery and vehicle
manufacture, its vital that the UK
scales up its ba ery manufacturing
capability. Jon Excell reports.
In the desert just outside of Reno, Nevada, stands a building
that, seen from above, dominates the otherwise featureless
landscape and – in terms of its footprint – dwarfs pre y much
any other building on the planet.
This is Tesla’s Gigafactory 1, a vast lithium ion ba ery
factory set up to satisfy the fi rm’s sky-rocketing domestic
demand for electric vehicle (EV) ba eries and, through
economies of scale, fulfi l its vision to bring aff ordable electric
motoring to the masses.
When complete the facility is expected to have an annual
ba ery production capacity of 150GWh per year, enough for 1.5
million cars. Add this impressive boast to the Tesla CEO’s famed
knack for generating publicity, and it’s no surprise that the
plant has a racted a fair amount of international a ention. But
Gigafactory1 is by no means the only show in town.
Indeed, around the world, in a bid to drive down costs and
simplify supply chains, ba ery manufacturers and car makers
are in a fevered race to establish similarly vast facilities to
produce the cells, modules and packs that will power the EV
revolution.
Whilst Asia remains the stronghold (China alone is projected
to hit 800GWh of annual manufacturing capacity by 2025)
Europe is expanding rapidly. Based on current plans - which
include the construction of facilities in Germany, Sweden,
Poland and Hungary - continental Europe will have 450GWh /
year of production by the end of the decade.
But to the growing of concern of many in the UK, there are
currently no fi rm plans for this country to follow suit: something
of a surprise given its growing EV manufacturing base and
historic expertise in the fi eld (the lithium ba ery was invented
in Oxford and the ba ery plant alongside Nissan’s Sunderland
car factory was once the fi rst of its kind in the Europe).
To give a sense of how rapidly things have moved on, whilst
that same plant (now owned by Chinese fi rm Envision) remains
the UK’s largest facility, its annual 2GWh capacity is dwarfed
by the scale of the planned pipeline
elsewhere in Europe. For example,
Chinese fi rm CATL - one of the world’s
largest providers of EV ba eries - hopes
to reach 60GWh at its main German site
by the middle of the decade.
In a recent report, the UK’s Faraday
Institution (a £78m initiative set up
through the government’s £274m Faraday
Challenge fund to drive developments
in ba ery technology) warns that a
failure to scale up could have disastrous
consequences for the UK car industry.
The fear is that as vehicle producers
switch to producing greater volumes of
electric vehicles, and wind down internal
combustion engine production, the high
cost of importing ba eries (which can
account for around 40 per cent of the
value of an EV) will erode the commercial
case for making cars here.
To avert this scenario, and tap into the
huge opportunity presented by the UK’s
growing EV market, the group claims
that the UK will need to build at least
seven 20GWh gigafactories by 2040. The
question is: can it be done, and is there
to meet domestic
demand the UK will need
to build at least seven
gigagfactories by 2040
happen?
Faraday Institution CEO Neil Morris is
relatively optimistic about the prospect,
and told The Engineer that whilst the
clock is defi nitely ticking, a combination
of existing expertise and government
support make the UK an a ractive
destination for ba ery investment.
Perhaps the most obvious of these
a ractions is the UK’s current position
as Europe’s fourth largest vehicle
manufacturer. And whilst failure to
invest in ba ery scale up could see it drop
down the rankings, Morris believes that
the existing base is a ractive to investors
keen to tap into ready markets for their
technology. “One of the key criteria
ba ery manufacturers look to when
placing a ba ery factory is proximity to
car manufacturing,” he said. He added
that the UK’s aforementioned historical
pedigree - though in many senses an all
too familiar tale of missed opportunities –
is also a positive that has created a legacy
of skilled workers and facilities that off er
a strong platform to build on.
What’s more, whilst it may not yet
have a Gigafactory the UK does have some
existing and planned manufacturing
capability. As well as the Sunderland
Envision site, a new ba ery assembly
centre at Jaguar Land Rover’s Hams
Hall site, that will produce units for its
next generation of electric vehicles, is
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