Britishvolt means is the UK’s answer to Tesla. By 2024, it is expected to produce hundreds of thousands of lithium-ion batteries a year for Britain’s automotive industry and spur an industrial renaissance for the country’s economically deprived northeast.
Since launching in 2019, the company has collected nearly $2.5 billion in funding promises, including £100 million ($123 million) from the UK government and preliminary agreements. kit to supply batteries for Aston Martin and Lotus.
But just nine months after breaking ground for a “gigafactory” in Northumberland in August 2022, Britishvolt went into administration, the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. The majority of its 232 employees being redundant.
It was a tumultuous end for a startup with huge ambitions and seen as the cornerstone of the UK’s electric vehicle industry. Its demise has left employees, analysts and policymakers scrambling to understand how it could go wrong so quickly and what it means for the future of the battery business. of the United Kingdom.
“In a way, I was surprised,” a former employee who left the company in December told WIRED, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The business has ambitious plans and from the people I have worked with, the knowledge and experience to execute them.”
Britishvolt was founded by Swedish entrepreneurs Orral Nadjari and Lars Carlstrom in 2019. Both have no experience in the electric vehicle space, but they approached the endeavor like the startup founders. entrepreneurs rather than industrialists by launching and making bold promises of future growth.
David Bailey, professor of business economics at Birmingham Business School in the UK, said: “Things are always tough. “They don’t have a track record of developing technology. They have failed to secure all the funding needed to build the £3.8 billion plant. And they don’t have any big customers.”
But the company’s vision backs up the UK government’s narrative of “leveling up”—supporting the growth of struggling, often post-industrial, areas of the country.
Britishvolt’s plant in the northeast promises to create 3,000 new jobs, with another 5,000 in its supply chain. Notification that the government would finance the company by 2022, then-prime minister Boris Johnson called the facility “a powerful testament to the North East’s skilled workers and leading position.” UK leader in the global green industrial revolution.”
Government support is enough for automakers like lotus flower and Aston Martin to sign memorandums of understanding with Britishvolt in January and March 2022, to build batteries for their electric vehicles. It also brings investment from industry: Big companies plowing money into Britishvolt through successive rounds of funding, investing estimated at around £200 millionand promise more if the company hits certain targets.
Najdari and Carlstrom resigned in August 2022, after it was reported that Carlstrom had Convicted of tax fraud in Sweden. They were replaced by former Ford executive Graham Hoare, who became president of global operations.
