Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg] Coventry-based Volklec plans to manufacture batteries for cars, boats, construction vehicles and aircraft using technology from China’s Far East Battery (FEB), a maker of batteries mainly for electric bikes.
There are two companies with “gigafactories” in the UK: the Chinese-owned AESC, which supplies Nissan’s Sunderland factory from a site next door, and Agratas, owned by the Indian conglomerate Tata, which is building a factory in Somerset to supply batteries to JLR, the maker of Jaguar and Land Rover cars.
The startup will aim to start producing batteries this year at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC), a part government-funded research centre in the West Midlands.
Popham said the company would take a low-risk approach to avoid problems that have hampered other British attempts to build EV batteries at scale.
However, Popham said there was a need for a UK battery company to supply other businesses that did not have enough demand for a gigafactory on their own.
