Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Where Britishvolt went wrong

issue 28 January 2023

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’.

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