The collapse of Britishvolt, with the loss of nearly 300 jobs, is the bitter end of an inglorious effort by both the company and the UK government to establish a homegrown automotive battery maker.
Created at the end of 2019, Britishvolt hoped to mirror the success of Sweden’s Northvolt. What followed was a series of false starts and unfulfilled promises that slowly exposed the unedifying truth at the heart of the Britishvolt enterprise: it lacked production-ready battery technologies or mainstream automotive customers.
The UK isn’t short of talent in the battery space, but it’s light on intellectual property (IP) when it comes to creating automotive-battery chemistries that can be quickly scaled up to create a viable product.
Over the course of its three-year lifespan, Britishvolt downplayed the chemistry issue.
