The barrage of bad news for the British automotive industry has been almost overwhelming during the past few weeks, leading many to question just what kind of future awaits as we negotiate the shift to electrification seemingly with all the grace and skill of a dancing giraffe.
To recap, local battery hope Britishvolt veered dangerously close to bankruptcy after its much vaunted scheme to build cells in north-east England ran out of cash.
Then electric van start-up Arrival announced it was essentially leaving the UK to focus on the US and hoover up much more generous incentives available there. Meanwhile, Geely-owned taxi company LEVC announced it was slashing 140 jobs in the UK as part of a plan to cut losses and return to “sustainable profitability and growth”.
“What we’re seeing is a slow-motion car crash, with BEIS standing on the sidelines,” David Bailey, professor of business economics at the Birmingham Business School, said, referring to the seeming lack of urgency from the government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Onlookers watched with horror at the spectacle. “Britishvolt in distress, Honda gone. We stand on a precipice where we stand to lose our industry and the intellectual property that goes with it,” former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer wrote on Twitter.
The government-funded Advanced Propulsion Centre, tasked with providing funding to promising electrification and other emission-cutting projects, has made it clear that we’re at a key juncture when it comes to pivoting away from internal combustion engines. In the dance to lead the new automotive world order, everyone is repositioning themselves for the next phase while the music is paused.
But Britain is in danger of sitting out the first zero-emission period altogether if government help is not forthcoming to support existing companies and attract new ones. Sales aren’t a problem: to the end of September, 175,614 new cars sold in the UK were electric. But of that figure, only 5% were built here.
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