Where Britishvolt went wrong

As a scattering of snow settles on the desolate site at Blyth in Northumberland that might have become the £3.8 billion Britishvolt battery factory, differences of opinion over the failure of this would-be flagship of the UK’s electric vehicle revolution become clearer. For Andrew Orlowski in the Daily Telegraph, it’s ‘a surprising success’, ministers having rightly declined to inject public funds into a venture with no market-ready technology, no customers and an executive team with a taste for private jets: at least ‘we know we won’t have another DeLorean to rue’.

For the Observer, by contrast, it’s ‘a new low for ministers… to boast about cash they saved by not investing in Britishvolt, especially when the firm’s only hope of success was for the government to take a strategic stake’. And for Matthew Brooker of Bloom-berg, noting Boris Johnson’s early praise for the project, Britishvolt’s crash is evidence of the ‘fantasy’ of Brexit opportunity and ‘a monument to Global Britain’s empty hype’.

So who’s right? First, let’s not crow at the demise of bold start-ups: they’re the lifeblood of capitalism. But this one was not led by boffins who’d perfected a better battery: its founders failed to convince potential investors that the technology they were developing would be ahead of the pack. Golden prizes await the inventor of the lighter, cheaper, longer-life electric vehicle battery, but so far as anyone knows, this wasn’t it.

And as UK carmakers switch to EV production, of course they need reliable supplies of batteries, preferably onshore rather than across the North Sea. But with leapfrogging technologies and huge capital demands, that’s likely to be achieved by the car giants themselves investing in or partnering with proven battery makers – as Nissan has done with a Chinese firm, Envision, which operates the UK’s only major battery facility adjacent to Nissan’s own Sunderland plant.