The battery centre wants to be the source of power for electric cars

The UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) opened for business a year ago last week.

The UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) officially opened its doors for business exactly one year ago last week. Its goal is to pave the way for 90GWh of battery cell production every year by 2030, which is enough to make power packs for more than a million electric cars every year. In 2030, Britain will stop selling new cars with internal combustion engines.

So far, only half of that has been promised by two projects in Britain. A startup called Britishvolt is building a huge site in Northumberland, and Nissan's partner Envision AESC is building a 9GWh facility next to Nissan's car factory in Sunderland, which is also in the northeast.

In order to give you a sense of the situation, there are 18 projects planned for continental Europe that will produce nearly 800GWh by 2030.

Jeff Pratt, who used to run Nissan's battery assembly plant in Sunderland and is now UKBIC's managing director, said, "If you don't have the battery manufacturers and the supply chain, you risk losing your [vehicle] manufacturers." "Brexit and the pandemic have slowed down investment in batteries in the UK, but things are getting better.

"We are fully aware of the economic possibilities for the UK if we win. This is clear from how many people are interested in UKBIC."

No one knows for sure how many cars Britain will make in 2030. Honda and Vauxhall, two of the biggest car companies in the UK, are no longer around. Jaguar is getting smaller so that it can become a high-end brand with fewer cars. Will Range Rovers run on hydrogen, batteries, or something else? Will Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Mini, which are all owned by German companies, want their battery cells to be made in Britain or just shipped there to be put together?

The £130 million UKBIC is in Britain's "motor city." It is close to Jaguar Land Rover's huge facilities at Whitley and just down the A45 from the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) and the Advanced Propulsion Centre at Warwick University, which are also important parts of the battery development chain. It thinks it has more than one job to do.

Funded by the taxpayer through UK Research and Innovation's Faraday Battery Challenge, it is at once a giant laboratory for battery cell manufacturers to test and validate their materials and chemistry, cell design, and manufacturing processes. It is already acting as a shadow factory for Britishvolt on low production runs before its own gigafactory opens. It is also a sort of Dragons' Den for would-be cell manufacturers to show investors what they can do.

UKBIC's role in the development chain for battery cells is to act as a "catapult" for gram-scale cell research in universities and kilogram-scale development at places like WMG to low-volume tonne-scale production and the transition of manufacturers to a mass-volume giga factory.

Its two production lines use methods you might see in brewing or food production, as well as at paper, textile, and steel mills. For example, giant hoppers and vats mix and refine the graphite, copper, lithium, manganese, and cobalt for the electrodes. Large rollers stretch sheets before high pressure calendering them into widths measured in microns, and slitting machines cut sheets to size before they go into kilns.

Advanced manufacturing, on the other hand, needs dry or clean rooms with very low humidity, where hundreds of workers would wear full-body overalls, masks, and goggles in a full-scale gigafactory. All of these facilities make this a process that uses a lot of energy, and the rising costs of power are rising faster than the rising costs of materials.

The cells are either put together in the shape of a cylinder, with the electrodes tightly wound around the outside, or they are packed flat in aluminium pouches. They are made into modules, which are then put together to make battery packs. 8,000 cylinders welded together like Tesla does, or 196 pouches on a Nissan Leaf. The total weight of these battery packs in a car can range from 300 kg to 600 kg, which is about the same as having three to five rugby forwards under your seat.

Pratt said that 90% of what UKBIC does is for the auto industry, which means that its zero-carbon goals are just scratching the surface. "The same regulations mean that we need to develop batteries for aerospace, off-highway and heavy goods vehicles, energy storage, rail, and marine," he said. "Most of these sectors are starting to show interest, but marine hasn't shown any yet."

He said that UKBIC is open to anyone who wants to join, but that they must first promise to invest in Britain.

"It is expected and preferred that in the future, battery cells will be made by a mix of local start-ups and investments from outside the country," he said. "This will help us build a UK industry that will last and grow for a long time."

He said that for this to happen, Britain needs to not only make the electrodes but also have a whole supply chain. and people will be needed along that chain.

It is thought that to make 90GWh in a gigafactory, 20,000 people will need to work in a field where not many people have worked before. Half of them would have to be skilled workers, which is a lot more than in a car plant.

He thought that a lot of these people could move from industries that are going out of business, like car engine plants, that will soon be useless. But he said, "It will be a huge challenge, and we have a role to play in training these people at UKBIC."

In a high-skilled industry, it is hard to train and keep people. In the year that UKBIC has been around, it has hired more than a hundred people, but 35% of those people have left. Pratt said, "There aren't enough skilled people, and the ones who are around tend to leave for jobs that pay more." "Recruiting and training will have to be done all over the country."

The ones in charge

A new company called Britishvolt is building a gigafactory in Northumberland, north of Blyth, that can make up to 38GWh. Glencore, a big mining company, is one of its backers, and it is worth more than £2 billion. It is working with Aston Martin and Lotus, and it has a deal with UKBIC to start making battery cells in small quantities.

Ilika, which is based in Hampshire, is looking for the next-generation high-density, high-performance solid-state battery that will be the "nirvana." It has worked with Jaguar Land Rover and McLaren and is worth £85 million on the Aim market. Working with UKBIC right now, which could lead to the first solid-state battery production line in Britain.

Amte Power is making batteries with a lot of power for high-end electric cars. Jaguar Land Rover and Williams have used it. and for aviation and the sea. UKBIC is based in Oxfordshire and is worth £20 million. It works with Imperial College London to develop ways to make things.