Looks like Cons are about to spend a lot of taxpayer money propping up the Brexshit economy
"The owner of carmaker Jaguar Land Rover is expected to announce that it will build an electric car battery gigafactory in the UK, backed with £500m in government funding, in what would be a major boost for the British car industry.
Jaguar Land Rover’s owner, the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, has been locked in negotiations for months for state aid for the project, which would aim to produce 40GWh of batteries a year, enough to power hundreds of thousands of electric cars.
An announcement of the plans for a plant in Somerset is expected as soon as Wednesday, although some details of the agreement have yet to be finalised, said one person briefed on the plans.
The failure of Britishvolt, a gigafactory startup which collapsed after securing pledges of £100m in government support, has cast a shadow over the future of carmaking in Britain.
A Tata gigafactory would likely create thousands of jobs. It will join one other battery plant at “gigafactory” scale in the UK: the Envisionplant in Sunderland, which is owned by a Chinese corporation and supplies Nissan."
Announcement on Tata Group plant, which could create thousands of jobs and receive significant state funding, may come on Wednesday
www.theguardian.com
A little bit more info to round out the above for the Tata Jaguar-Land-Rover (JLR) deal:
- £500m taxpayer funding;
- £4bn Tata funding;
- 40 GWh/yr;
- 4,000 jobs though unclear as how many construction vs production vs supply chain;
- 2026 production start;
- won vs Spain;
- Tata may supply cells to other manufacturers;
- the other cell plant in the UK is the Envision one at Nissan, currently at 10 GWh/yr, plans increase to 38 GWh/y;
- JLR did 376,000 vehicles in 2022 by comparison - this announcement is only about investments into cell manufacturing;
So total of 80 GWh/yr should do 800,000 vehicles/year in UK at average of 100 kWh/vehicle. If one includes vans then the 100kWh/vehicle may be about right, otherwise something in the 60-80 kWh/vehicle would be more typical for UK.
- Over 775,014 cars built in the UK in 2022.
- Car exports down -14.0% in 2022, with 606,838 shipped worldwide – 78.3% of total production.
- Over half of these exports were to the European Union, 57.6%
UK car
production has halved in recent years
UK vehicle
sales have also declined in recent years. My memory (which may be faulty) is that it used to be the case that in recent decades the UK was a net importer in numerical unit terms, but a net exporter in revenue terms because the exported vehicles tended to be higher value than the imported vehicles.
Overall this deal has done just enough to stop the UK automotive sector from total collapse; preserves core manufacturing competencies; and should keep UK's balance of payments stable in this regard (this is a big deal). It seems likely that UK will now neck down to just two significant automotive firms: Tata-JLR and Nissan. There are indications that Tata may supply cells to other manufacturers. Another indication that the standard minimum globally competitive
The dickering over getting Tata steel plant at Port Talbot and the Jingye steel plant at Scunthorpe through decarbonisation is still ongoing.
I think another 20 GWh/yr is needed to get a full UK solution for UK automotive, including heavy vehicles (HGV and PSV). Another 80-100 GWh/yr of UK production is needed to get the requisite amount of cells flowing for the stationary storage requirement (as a quickie one can figure out that it is about a 1:1 ratio required in most economies for substantial decarbonisation, more for full) so that would be 2-3 more full sized cell factories, bringing it to 4-5 in total, all of minimum scale 40 GWh/yr.
UK population is approximately 60-million so implication is one 40 GWh/yr cell factory for every 10-15 million population in a typical OECD country. Noting that 40 GWh/yr is 400-500,000 vehicles/yr this means there will be losers as typical US automotive sites (? also globally) have been in the range 150-250,000/yr except for the biggest sites. As I have said before those losers will both be locations (cities/regions) and also entire countries.
--------- references --------
Rishi Sunak says Tata Group’s UK decision ‘is testament to the strength of our car manufacturing industry’
www.theguardian.com
SMMT is the country’s primary source of data on the motor industry. Click here for the monthly SMMT manufacturing data for cars, commercial vehicles and engines
www.smmt.co.uk
In 2021, more than two million motor vehicles were sold in the United Kingdom, down from its peak at around 3.1 million units in 2016.
www.statista.com
Time is running out in Port Talbot to decarbonise its operations: at stake is the supply chain for much of Britain’s construction and manufacturing sectors, along with thousands of jobs
www.theguardian.com
en.wikipedia.org
www.bloomberg.com
www.news4jax.com
www.wardsauto.com
