the electric car battery maker britishvolt has gone into administration after hopes of a last minute bid for the company faded. the collapse raises questions about uk hopes of building a home grown battery industry. the company, which had plans to build a gigafactory to make the uk start up had been expecting to build a new 5.8 billion or $4.7 billion factory in northumberland, as part of a long term vision to boost uk manufacturing. well, this promotional video shows what the factory with a capability to make 300,000 electric batteries a year would have looked like. the plan was to create 3,000 jobs at the plant. now, administrators have taken over the business and most of britishvolt s 300 staff are being made redundant. here s our business editor simonjack. so what went wrong? britishvolt was a start up company with no track record. their battery technology was only at the prototype stage. although there are expressions of interest from lotus and aston martin, they
Transcripts for BBCNEWS Outside Source 20240604 19:30:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Tries to slash emissions? colin walker is transport lead at the energy and climate intelligence unit. he says. well, evidently, that has taken a blow today. around a year ago, former prime minister borisjohnson talked of the britishvolt plant being part of the uk s global green industrial revolution . and his government promised britishvolt £100 million in support. but when the company asked for a £30 million advance last year, ministers refused, as the company had not hit agreed construction milestones to access the funds. here s steve bush from the unite union. we have a government statement today, saying.
Is going through the biggest transformation we ve seen in decades, and it needs support. and if it doesn t get that support, we won t have an automotive industry in the uk. we believe we need five to six gigafactories to replace like for like, come 2030. a 2030 target was ambitious anyway. it was set by this government and brought forward by five years. fine, let s do that. let s have a strategy and support it, and a meaningful strategy, and that starts with gigafactories being built in the uk. and here s the labour shadow business secretary: there is a brilliant site in blyth, it hopefully. will become a gigafactory, but unless the government has a real strategy to attract the investment required to do that to the uk, - we risk losing what is three quarters of a million jobs . in the automotive sector in the long term in the uk well sales of electric vehicle are creeping up here in the uk. in december, electric vehicles saw their biggest ever monthly market share,
Here s steve bush from the unite union. 100 million s a drop in the ocean. this sector, the automotive sector, is going through the biggest transformation we ve seen in decades and it needs support. and if it doesn t get that support, we won t have an automotive industry in the uk. we believe we need five to six gigafactories to replace like for like, come 2030. a 2030 target was ambitious anyway. it was set by this government and brought forward by five years. fine, let s do that. let s have a strategy and support it, and a meaningful strategy, and that starts with gigafactories being built in the uk. and here s the labour shadow business secretary. there is a brilliant site in blyth, it hopefully. will become a gigafactory, - but unless the government has a real strategy to attract the investment required| to do that to the uk,| we risk losing what is three quarters of a millionjobs in the automotive sector- in the long term in the uk.