A raft of projects focused on the development of battery technology for electric vehicles have received a £23 million funding boost from the UK government.
The collaborative projects, which range from a new AI-based battery manufacturing approach to the development of safety systems to prevent overheating have been awarded a total of £23 million of funding by the government’s Faraday Battery Challenge.
Established to supercharge the UK’s electric vehicle expertise by driving collaboration across academia and business, the challenge will ultimately see a total of £274 million awarded to EV battery projects. The latest wave of funding takes the amount invested up to £82.6 million in 63 projects.
Amongst the latest winners are a Granta Design led study looking into the use of artificial intelligence in battery manufacture, and a project led by mining consultancy firm Wardell Armstrong which will work with experts at the Natural History Museum and mining firm Cornish Lithium to lead a new study looking to develop a UK supply of lithium.
Also successful is the Jaguar Land Rover-led LIBRIS project which is looking to improve understanding of the causes of “thermal runway” events. The project team claims that its research will lead to better battery pack design and control software, better fire sensing equipment, more use of innovative flame-retardant materials and better packaging for batteries in transport and during storage.
Meanwhile, an initiative that includes Oxford University spin-out Brill Power, Aston Martin, Delta Motorsport and Imperial College London will be exploring the development of new kinds of energy storage systems for hybrid electric vehicles that uses a combination of lithium ion batteries and supercapacitors.
Commenting on the funding Business and Energy Secretary, Greg Clark said: “We are committed to ensuring our world-leading automotive sector can flourish. These exciting new projects will build on the UK’s reputation for excellence, our rich heritage in the auto industry and pave the way for advances towards a cleaner economy.”
It seems to be too little and too late, and really quite inappropriate.
We’re miles behind having a battery manufacturing industry within this country and no strategic access to key natural resources required for building them.
In my view, we should focus on other parts of the systems such as the EV drive and transmission system which are better aligned with the UK strengths and manufacturing base.
It is all very well doing research into battery technology, but a critical and integral part of the using batteries is the ability to charge them! Not do we need research into increasing the charging rate, but much investment has to put into a proper charging infrastructure. If it takes less than 5 minutes to load a fossil fuel vehicle with 100kW of energy, and the best part of an hour at best through the national grid what incentive is there for people to use EVs? The consequent impact on business and wider society that is built around rapid long distance transport and the convenience of liquid fuels is not dicussed, and is probably far more important. Batteries and propulsion mechanics can be continually improved but we need to be able to recharge them now. When the viable infrastructure is put in place we will buy EVs, but not before.
When I read the heading paragraph, I though AI, Aluminium technology for batteries- that’s novel!
However, the application of Artificial Intelligence- or Robotics and Electronic Measurement as it used to be called, won’t get us up to the level of , say Nissan, who are at least 3 years in front of the UK.
Driving academia doesn’t build vehicles and until a decent line of mid-range, sensibly-priced cars becomes available , with the charging infrastructure, private owners/users won’t buy them, unless forced by legislation prohibiting the operation of IC engines in any vehicle.
Building electric Aston Martins or E-Paces isn’t much use to the ‘man in the street’.
Perhaps the impending empty Ellesmere Port Plant could be used?
100kWh of diesel (~10 litres, 2.2 gallons) will typically get you 217km (135 miles) and cost you £13.50 (10p per mile) while you stand filling it and then queuing to pay.
100kWh in an EV (Tesla, say) will typically give you 535km (333 miles) range and cost you £13.80 (4.1p per mile, standard UK tariff) after spending 10 seconds plugging/unplugging at home, with the full range available every morning, if you wish.
In calculating the relative economics it is worth remembering the exchequer gets around £32billion a year off the motorist in car + fuel taxes (58p per litre and 20% VAT on top). EVs are exempt from VED and VAT @ 5% is the only tax on electricity. Once there is any significant (i.e. revenue impacting) adoption of EVs I confidently predict that tax position will change …
What happened to the hydrogen economy? and where is the electricity for all these batteries going to come from? A question in the BBC Focus magazine a few months ago. The answer was that we would need the output from the equivalent of some six nuclear power stations if all vehicles were battery driven. Any comments anyone?
Nick Cole:
“…it takes less than 5 minutes to load a fossil fuel vehicle with 100kW of energy, and the best part of an hour at best through the national grid what incentive is there for people to use EVs…”
You’re not an engineer are you.
Yea, Trevor, you do raise an interesting point.
At some point HMRC will start to loose, well ‘R’ but i think we’re a way off that yet.
I think at the moment the political priority has to be to remove the carbon burning legacy vehicles.
I guess the balance has to be increasing carbon tax more than the electicity tax. Or just increase the annual tax for car ownership for all vehicles while maintaining carbon fuel duty.
There does of course remain, the suspicion that not ALL the revenue generated by road users is actually spent on transport. :-/ 🙂
Again another lively debate on EV’s. My worry is that the total life-time impact of EV against IC is conveniently forgotten. What happenens to the lithium in the battery pack when disposed of? What happens when the supply of lithium runs out, or is controlled by a single country – China? I read, fairly recently I think, an article in The Engineer about the results of a study on the whole life-time impact of the two technologies. My recollection is that there was not much difference in the environmental impact owing to the increased need for electrical power generation, and the disposal of battery materials. The recycling aspects were, I believe, taken into account and showed a slight advantage toward the IC engine. Can anybody find me a link to this study please?
It would not be possible to supply that lump of energy out of a house supply in the time you state. Most house supplies in the UK cannot supply more than 25kwh in one hour. Your current house supply is unlikely to be more than 100A at 230v. We have friend that have rapid charging systems that are limited by the suppliers to a lower figure to ensure the rest of have sufficient power for our every day needs.
In general the UK power distribution system is based on assumptions of distributed loads in a given area. This keeps down the area of cable necessary to supply each house and has so far worked for the domestic users. If you go to industrial users they have a maximum demand tariff as well as a standard flat rate charge, using this electricity is very expensive.
What you have done is fallen into the standard trap our stupid leaders fall into, electricity comes out of a plug in the wall, forgetting the infastructure behind the supply system is restricted and in many cases not suitable for local high demand.
I believe that much of the taxes raised from domestic vehicle ownership (road fund and petrol duty) act as a subsidy to the damage that heavy goods vehicle make (as road the damage is at least proportional to the 4th power of axle weight – more when cornering – and not forgetting subterranean and building issues) – and their effect on injuries and congestion.
It would be good to think that this subsidy could be used to take freight off the roads; this would remove pollution (& CO2) effects – but would require the move to railways as, I suspect, that batteries are not going to be suitable for freight vehicles for quite some time (if ever?).
It would of course mean that railways would need to be reinstated for the freight and benefit of rural economy – rather than for London commuters.(Though Londoners would benefit by not having HGVs needing to congest and pollute their streets)
Dear Engineers,
I´v got the impression that some are mixing up energy (in kWh) and power (in kW)!
I agree with all who wrote that cars driven by high power are not the solution of our problems. Trains use much less energy by far. Cars (personal and for heavy goods) should be used only for the last few kilometers, then they may easily be made lighter and thus consuming much less resources in production, use and disposal than the kind of cars that we use currently.
It seems that we are all agreed that converting the whole road fleet to lithium-ion rechargeable batteries is not a good answer in the immediate future.
So, given the obvious need for pollution-free electric traction, we need to concentrate on the power supply. Since we do not yet know how to create a simple electrons-in-a-can solution, here is the part that needs tackling.
Over to the chemists and physicists. Come on guys; get thinking, you know you can do it if you put your minds to it!
From memory (last time I checked) around 25% of the £32 billion tax raised from road users gets spent on roads, the remaining £24 billion goes to fund other government spending
On the appeal for people to use the car less & trains more: if I buy a £30,000 EV the straight line depreciation over say 8 years is £3,750 per annum. If I drive 10,000 miles a year using Ian Cash’s 4.1p/mile that’s £410 per annum. Obviously I am not going to leave it sitting on the drive and take the train, on the contrary the economics dictate that, given the low marginal cost per mile I’ll drive everywhere I can …
Good to see battery development progressing, the improvement in batteries over the last decade is impressive, but there is scope for more.
The points made by Trevor about electric car running costs are very interesting as the loss of £32b in taxation revenue will have to be moved elsewhere. Taxing electricity would be problematic, so it will be a hidden tax , probably related to car ownership or mileage driven- as usual it’ll be “the poor what gets the blame”.
However, if the proposals to go carbon neutral proceed at the estimated cost of £ 1000b, this cost will be lost in the detail. It is hard to believe that the UK government could even consider spending half of one year’s GDP on a scheme that will reduce the world’s CO2 emissions by 0.5 % at most, while the world-wide CO2 emissions are increasing at 2% / year, as an act of self-righteous virtue signalling