The battery industry never stands still. Even after over 20 years in this industry the speed of innovation still has the ability to take my breath away.
So the message is simple. If you want to be at the forefront of the battery industry, relentless development is essential.
At Britishvolt the headline mission is to make the UK’s first battery gigaplant, manufacturing world-class lithium-ion batteries. Less well heralded is our commitment to research and development.
We’re currently in the process of setting up an R&D facility, led by Chief Technical Officer, Allan Paterson. His world-leading expertise will ensure that we work to maintain a first-mover and technology advantage.
In the UK, of course, we already have a brilliant culture of battery innovation, and world-class research, underway for a good few years now. We already have the eco-system around us that can assist us in augmenting and accelerating our development activities with the superb work of bodies such as the Faraday Battery Challenge.
The market for electrified vehicles is going to change rapidly over the next ten years and it’s important that we stay ahead. Of course, we can’t predict everything that’s coming over the horizon. So we’re building in capability to respond, and respond quickly. That means being smart, agile and investing in new close to market and over the horizon technology developments to respond to new customer opportunities.
It also means making our gigaplant manufacturing processes capable of accommodating new developments as they are ready for scale. With this in mind and ensuring that we stay ahead, we’ve yet to commit to the future battery technologies, that will be made in the third phase of our gigaplant roll-out due to come on stream in 2027, we will be future proofing our business. We will make sure that now, and in the future, we will deliver our customers are demanding rather than simply supplying them off the shelf ‘what we have’ type cell solutions.
Collaboration is key to success in the battery industry, this is important not only for technology development but also for creating the correct interface with customers to make sure the UK Automotive industry
With Britishvolt’s innovation and future manufacturing capacity, the future of the UK battery industry looks extremely bright indeed.
