West Country 'knock on already being felt' as investment grows in region's EV and green tech sector
A leading supply chain expert says the region will need 'innovation and skills' to keep up
Last updated 4th Dec 2023
It's claimed plans for a huge new 'gigafactory' making electric car batteries off the M5 has already had a knock-on effect across our region in the growing 'green tech' sector.
The site at Puriton's Gravity Business Park, being run by Jaguar-Landrover, is expected to create 9,000 jobs once up and running with more predicted in the regional supply chain too.
Across the West Country there's already a growing EV sector - even with firms that are not associated to the new gigafactory - and one supply chain expert has told us they expect it to continue to grow and innovate 'just to keep up'.
Towards the end of next year, Somerset's Electrified Automation is moving to a site that's four times the size on the edge of Bridgwater. They are not connected to the gigafactory and sell battery products and automation systems around the world.
Jim Winchester, MD , said the sector is seeing a huge rise in demand from 'lawn care equipment - so golf courses adopting electric lawn mowers and councils using the same - to the marine sector going electric and construction equipment. He explained: “Many city centres in Europe now are demanding that you use some form of electric or hybrid machine whether it's an excavator, a work platform or even a digger'.
He added: "Given the news of Gravity we (the region) could be quite a big player in the near future but right now I wouldn’t say there's lots of other electric motor companies here doing what we do - but there's some quite niche engineering companies around doing similar things with robots and automation lines, just making a different product."
Andrew Coventry is a lecturer at City College Plymouth, who devised and leads a two-day course for existing qualified electricians to keep up with installing the latest charging boxes at people's homes.
He said: "It isn't just a box that connects that car to the charge point there's all sorts of design considerations and the market is developing fast and technology that was around when electric vehicles first dropped is kind of obsolete now - with all the features that you can programme for smarter charging, using energy that's generated on site or for just picking up green energy when it's generated at times when offshore wind is providing the UK's power."
Doctor Kyle Alves is a supply chain expert and lecturer at the University of the West of England, who says: "We know for a fact that we are behind in the number of technicians that we need to be able to serve the number of EVs that we're expecting over the next 10 years or so - but I think the market is responding to that.
"We're past the first wave and the wear and tear on that infrastructure is really starting to show.
“You can now get a whole lot more electricity into a battery a whole lot faster and that requires different equipment, but now we have to have a whole army and whole industry of people who can install these rapid chargers.
"There has to a be a rapid response from the market place for things like the services that are associated. There's an expected increase of £8 billion or something in the UK to support all the financial payments structures that happen as a result of using our EVs.”
Doctor Alves says he expects to see lots of innovation in the sector and believes the West Country has an equal chance and opportunity, adding: “It's skills, it's sales it's infrastructure, it's being able to safely manage high volume and high power electricity. We're going to need innovation and skills, and skills development, and a lot of people to be able to do this at scale."