The parent company of the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, Tata, says it wants to build one of the largest battery factories for electric cars in Europe in England. As the Indian group announced on Wednesday, the “Gigafactory” is to produce batteries with a total storage capacity of 40 gigawatt hours annually in the future. The group wants to invest more than four billion pounds (equivalent to 4.62 billion euros) for this. Production is scheduled to start in 2026.
According to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (43), the investment in the county of Somerset in western England should create 4,000 new jobs and many more at suppliers. The conservative politician described the decision as a “huge vote of confidence in Great Britain“.
Tata gets hundreds of millions of pounds in funding
London Tata reportedly eased the decision with hundreds of millions of pounds in government subsidies. However, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps (54) did not want to reveal exactly how high the support is on Wednesday. “It really wasn’t just money,” Shapps told Sky News. British research capacities and the government’s plans to reduce electricity prices also played a role. Just nine months ago, the group opened the factory in Spain want to build, Shapps said. “So, we worked very long and hard on it.”
In Great Britain, the sale of new vehicles with pure combustion technology is to be phased out by 2030. According to Shapps, the new battery factory should be able to cover half of the British electric car production in the country by then.
Important deal for Britain after Brexit
The head of the German-British Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK) in London, Ulrich Hoppe, described the announcement of the new battery factory as the “first important step in the right direction” to keep Great Britain as a location for the automotive industry. However, he added: “There’s more to come.”
Batteries make up a significant proportion of the added value of e-vehicles. This is of great importance for trade between the EU and Great Britain, because the trade agreement concluded after Brexit only provides for duty-free vehicles from next year that were mainly manufactured in the respective domestic market. A large part of the battery production is currently taking place in Asia.
According to Hoppe, the problem with the rules of origin for the British has not yet been completely solved by the planned “Gigafactory”. Even if the batteries are assembled in the UK, they are still made from components, some of which have to be imported. It then depends, for example, on raw material prices whether the added value has mainly taken place in the own country or not.
It is unclear whether the EU and Great Britain can agree on lifting the tariffs, Hoppe continued. In any case, Great Britain has a greater interest in this than the EU, because access to the European single market with more than 400 million people is much more important for the United Kingdom than vice versa.