Subs exclusive: What's next for Williams Advanced Engineering

One of the motorsport sector’s proudest boasts is that it discovers and develops technologies that bring vital and rapid benefits to wider society. The latest to enter this hallowed space is Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), the Oxfordshire company that was spun out of the Williams Formula 1 team back in 2010. Its first job was to create the Jaguar C-X75 hybrid hypercar, and it has recently done much of the engineering work for the 2000bhp electric Lotus Evija. Today, as well as continuing on cars, WAE is working on a suite of hydrogen and EV developments that promise major changes to several huge industrial sectors, mining and heavy transportation prominent among them. The key to this is WAE’s acquisition three months ago by ambitious Australian firm Fortescue Metals Group, best known for extracting 200 million tonnes of iron ore annually from leases it holds in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and selling it globally. Metals mining, especially on this scale, might not sound like a green activity, but Fortescue and chairman Andrew Forrest, who founded the company 20 years ago, beg to differ. Over the past couple of years, Forrest has developed aggressive plans not only to use WAE’s car technology to decarbonise his entire mining operation by 2030 but also to become an annual producer of 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen in the same period. To support this, one of WAE’s first tasks is to develop zero-carbon powertrains for two kinds of 300-tonne mine haulage truck: a BEV and a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid, each aimed at different duty cycles. At first, the plan is to harvest Western Australia’s wind and sunshine to generate electricity and hydrogen, using them at source to power Fortescue’s large fleet of mine vehicles. But behind that plan lies a much more ambitious project to promote the decarbonisation of mining operations around the world, promising a huge contribution to global CO2 reduction, plus technology that could spread into road-going heavy haulage. Both partners are at pains to point out that the project uses expertise WAE has developed – and will keep developing – from its deep connections with both modern motorsport and performance car engineering. WAE CEO Craig Wilson, who has his own rich pedigree in automotive businesses, is adamant that the company must keep its car connections to stay ahead of the game. “Technology moves very quickly in the automotive sector, so it’s vital that we keep our connection,” he said. “We’ve always been automotive innovators, and our link with Fortescue is already advancing our engineering power. Until now, we’ve lived from project to project. Now, we will start investing selectively in R&D for its own sake.” WAE’s partnership with Fortescue grew out of a close, two-year supplier-client relationship, said Wilson. He explained: “Andrew Forrest is very particular about building a creative culture, and so are we, and we just hit it off. “Once we started working together, Fortescue soon realised they would need more bespoke engineering than they initially expected. A lot of what they will need can’t be bought off the shelf.” Fortescue’s targets could hardly be more ambitious. As well as the two electrified truck powertrains, its decarbonisation target requires many of the vehicles to be autonomous, capable of running without drivers 24 hour a day, seven days a week. They are likely to be monitored from a nerve centre in Perth, Western Australia’s capital. Then there’s the Infinity Train. When Forrest announced the WAE acquisition, he also forecast the development of a new kind of train that will use gravity to generate electricity as it descends a slope on the way to disgorging its ore at Port Hedland, then employ that energy to drive back uphill to collect the next load. It’s practically perpetual motion. The partners’ commitment to hydrogen power is strong and certain, asserted Wilson. “We see it as a completely green fuel,” he said. “It may not be as energy-dense as fossil fuels, but you can offset that to an extent in the way that you generate hydrogen and use it. “We have battery power, but that’s currently associated with supply chain and rareearth supply problems. “In any case, what else is there but hydrogen? If we were forced to go green tomorrow, it would be the only solution.” Once the targets have been achieved, Forrest believes the partners’ achievements will encourage mining operations around the world to use similar carbon-neutral techniques – a highly significant contribution to stopping climate change. And the hydrogen, produced in optimal regions around the world (such as Western Australia, where the sun shines and the wind blows) can be used either in other operations’ mining vehicles or as a zerocarbon fuel in wider society. For all of his close car connections, Wilson seems most excited by WAE’s potentially important role in helping to stop climate change. “Imagine if we could look back in five years’ time and say we had played a major role in decarbonising the whole mining industry,” he said. “How great would that be?” From pushbikes to James Bond: the WAE story Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) CEO Craig Wilson is an Australian engineer who has spent much of his career in the UK. He joined Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s JaguarSport in 1990 and then managed the Aston Martin DB7 programme to production readiness in 1993. He stayed at TWR until 1995, then moved back to Australia at the end of the decade to rebuild its flagging Holden racing outfit, winning national championships in 2006 and 2007. By 2010, he was back in the UK, just in time to take control at WAE, launched out of the remnants of the discontinued Jaguar C-X75 hypercar project. “We had 30 people, a Portakabin and no work,” he recalled, “so we set about finding some.” Wilson soon built a cluster of clients that included Porsche for its Le Mans efforts and Nissan for its Time Attack GTR project and Blade Glider concept car. Many projects are secret and never come to notice, but WAE is known also to have worked on the battery system of the Jaguar I-Pace and developed electric power for the hugely successful Brompton bicycle. It also at very short notice converted a fleet of C-X75 prototypes to V8 power for use in the James Bond film Spectre. Despite a well-publicised spat last year with Lotus over work on the Evija electric hypercar, WAE continues to support that project as it nears production. Next year, WAE will again become the official supplier of batteries for Formula E, a position that it held for the sport’s first four seasons. It also supplies batteries for Extreme E and the World Touring Car Championship. Wilson said: “Today we have 430 employees, mostly engineers. We aim to have 500 by the end of this year and close to 700 by the end of 2023. The labour market is tight, but we need the talent. Around here, it’s all go.”