Coventry to be home of UK Battery Industrialisation Centre
New £108m facility will provide world-leading testing facilities for new battery technology and train engineers in battery manufacturing
A new national centre of excellence in battery technologies, aimed specifically at electric car energy storage, is envisaged as a stepping stone to a large-scale battery factory for electric vehicles – “a Gigafactory in the UK,” according to minister for business and industry Andrew Stephenson, announcing an additional £28m funding for the centre. The total cost of the facility will be £108m, said mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street.
Coventry won a national competition to choose where the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) would be cited, and the centre is part of the West Midlands Local Industrial Strategy, which was developed with many local businesses and is the first of its type in the country. The funding Stephenson announced is in addition to an £80m previously-announced investment from the government’s Faraday Battery Challenge – a £246m commitment over the next four years on developing automotive batteries.
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Comment: The UK is closer to deindustrialisation than reindustrialisation
"..have been years in the making" and are embedded in the actors - thus making it difficult for UK industry to move on and develop and apply...