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11 October 2023

Daily Newsletter

UK Gigafactory in ‘advanced talks with Asian battery makers’

Details of interested parties have not been released

Dani Cole October 11 2023

The UK’s West Midlands Gigafactory joint venture has confirmed that it is in advanced discussions with several leading Asian battery manufacturers about future investment at the Coventry site.

The JV is a partnership between Coventry City Council and Coventry Airport.

Details of the Asian firms have not been released.

Speaking at the Labour Party Conference earlier this week, Cllr Jim O’Boyle, Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change at Coventry City Council, said: “I’m pleased to report that we are now in advanced discussions with leading Asian battery manufacturers who want to develop a presence in the UK.

"We hope, with the support of the UK Government, that we will secure an investor and further strengthen our region’s leadership credentials in the shift towards electrification.”

The West Midlands Gigafactory’s Coventry location is the only available site in the UK with planning permission in place for a large-scale battery production facility with capacity for up to 60GWh per annum, enough to power 600,000 EVs. The project will inject £2.5 billion investment into the region, the JV says.

High upfront costs could be detrimental towards the growth of the off-highway EV market

The global off-highway electric market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.4% by 2030, per GlobalData. Despite the strong growth, high upfront costs may pose a challenge. Due to the high capacity of these vehicles, they consume large amounts of power from a number of battery packs installed on the vehicle, whose high cost in turn adds to the cost of the vehicle, thereby increasing the initial cost. However, governments worldwide are offering subsidies and tax exemptions in order to help customers to counter the initial purchase cost.