Workers at Ford Halewood, looking at a new electric vehicle drive unit on display

The first electric vehicle I saw outside the SMMT conference was a white Tesla. The first I saw inside was a white Sinclair C5. The slideshows spoke of billions of pounds of upcoming hi-tech investment. Electric vehicles have been on quite a journey.

The North West is at the heart of Britain’s electric vehicle transformation with hundreds of millions of pounds of investment on the way - and there could be more success to come if the automotive industry gets the government backing it needs.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) this week held its Regional Forum in Liverpool for the first time, and chose to focus on electric vehicles.

The key local manufacturers were all represented at the conference - and all of them are seeing huge investments in their electric vehicle capacity and into reducing their carbon footprint.

Don't miss the latest news and analysis with our regular North West newsletters - sign up here for free.

JLR employs thousands in Halewood, while more than 1,000 people work at Stellantis’ former Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port and hundreds work at Ford’s transmissions plant in Halewood.

Meanwhile Bentley employs 4,000 in Crewe, while Leyland Trucks employs more than 1,000 in Lancashire.

And beyond the big names there are many suppliers in the region, who also employ thousands and will also play key roles in greening the sector.

But the industry is not without its challenges - not least a need for more government support for EVs and their infrastructure, whoever wins the upcoming general election.

The Sinclair C5 was an 80s experiment in electric vehicles that failed. It's a reminder that electric vehicles haven’t always been fashionable, and traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles continue to dominate the market. But the sheer scale of the investments detailed at this conference show electric vehicles are now mainstream, and the industry is only going to get bigger.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the SMMT, agrees the region is a European leader in the push towards electric vehicles - and says that is a tribute to the success of its plants and its workers.

He said: “Last year, some £20bn was committed to the UK automotive industry which was more than the previous seven years put together… and a significant portion of that has gone into the North West.

“Everyone has been setting out their strategy to shift from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles because that is the future. It's not going to be a smooth road to get there but everyone recognises that that is the future.”

But the industry does face some major challenges if it is to keep growing. One such challenge - which came up several times in the conference - is that government needs to offer incentives to car buyers to encourage them to go electric.

The current Government has given lots of support to manufacturers to encourage them to build EVs, and manufacturers will have to make a certain proportion of their output electric to comply with net zero regulations.

But consumer demand for EVs has slowed - leaving manufacturers questioning their massive infrastructure investments.

Mr Hawes said: “Those investments only make sense if you have a relatively strong domestic market for those products. Otherwise why would you build them here?

“So to then have a statement from the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to say to the consumer we're not going to force you to buy a heatpump, to change a boiler, or to buy an EV, and to then publish a regulation which compels the manufacturer to sell these vehicles… if you're a consumer you're thinking 'What does this mean? I'm told I don't have to buy one, but the manufacturers are being told they must sell them…’

“Undoubtedly it's a new technology, so it's more expensive, so you need some form of incentive to help overcome that upfront purchase cost. We think halving VAT… would put about 250,000 EVs on the road.”

Another Government investment requested by many in the industry is a strong commitment to investment in public EV charging points.

Mr Hawes asked: “If I'm going to invest in one of these vehicles, can I be sure wherever I go, I'm going to be able to charge it?

“If you live at home with a driveway, that's fabulous. But if you don't, you live in an apartment, a flat, or a terraced house, and you don't have that dedicated space, you're at the mercy of public charging. That needs to accelerate. Its getting better, but it needs to accelerate.”

Mr Hawes also had an eye on the general election. He said the next Government, whatever its colour, would need to reiterate its support for the automotive sector - and should work to build trade relationships with the major markets on which it depends. And he said the Government also needed to offer support on regulations and red tape, particularly as the UK diverged from Europe following Brexit.

He said: “We're a very highly-regulated sector. Consumers don't see this necessarily because they only see the vehicle, but to put a vehicle on the road there is a huge amount of complicated regulation you must meet.

“What we don't want to see is UK regulation differing from other international regulatory frameworks.”

He added that the SMMT’s request was for the Government to “have an industrial strategy which supports manufacturing in terms of competitiveness, energy costs, skills, and obviously a strong market.”

Simon Reid, assistant director for business growth at Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, said the city region and its surroundings, including Ellesmere Port, was an “epicentre of automotive manufacturing”.

He said: “It’s in our interest to make sure the automotive sector sees growth because it’s high quality jobs, very productive, and secures our economic growth for the next 15/20 years.”

JLR, formerly Jaguar Land Rover, announced last year that Halewood was to become the group’s first all-electric plant under the group’s £15bn Reimagine strategy to “reposition the company as an electric-first, modern luxury carmaker by 2030”.

The plant is now undergoing an investment programme so it can start building a new all-electric mid-sized Range Rover that is set to go on the market next year. JLR has also confirmed that Halewood will then also build another electric vehicle based on the same EMA platform.

Trevor Leeks, operations director at JLR Halewood, said investment at Halewood over the past 18 months included a new body shop, and improvements to its Body Construction centre that will see robots used to automate the fixing of doors onto vehicles.

He added: “Vehicles have got larger, so we've had to make modifications in our paint shop. Last year we had to cut 1.5 metres of ovens down the middle and extend them by a metre because the cars are getting bigger.”

Meanwhile thousands of employees across the group are being trained in electrification.

Mr Leeks said: “The building work is coming to an end. The installation and commissioning is where we're at at the moment - which is the exciting part of launching new vehicles.”

He added: “We’re starting to build some of the early builds this year, and training our employees - there’s lots of training hours going in - getting ready for the full launch next year.”

Some 4,500 people work at Halewood, with 3,500 employed directly by JLR and another 1,000 employed through partners such as DHL. Mr Leeks says the EV investment at Halewood is good news for their long-term future.

He said: “We celebrated 60 years of manufacturing last year. There's been a huge investment for these new products that are coming over the next few years. So we’re very positive about the future of JLR and Halewood in particular.”

Ford is investing a total of £355m in its Halewood plant to get it fit for the electric vehicle future. The company said Halewood was “integral” to its global transition to electric vehicles.

Halewood will build the electric vehicle propulsion systems that replace the engines and transmission systems used in traditional ICE vehicles.

Ford Halewood’s plant manager Lee Meyers told BusinessLive the site’s transition team had recently passed the million-hour landmark in their work - and that there was still more work to go both physically and in terms of training the site’s 600 staff.

He said: “We're at the commissioning phase and trial run phase now, so there are some really interesting things to see.

“We've transferred a lot of our skills, where we had significant expertise around gear machining and so on, but we also had a steep learning curve around things associated with the electric motors. For example, we've got welding processes that take 0.7 of a millisecond!

“So it's really a significant upskilling, but the team have been fantastic in terms of their adaptability.”

The Stellantis plant at Ellesmere Port may sit just outside Liverpool city region’s boundaries but has drawn many of its employees from Merseyside since it opened 60 years ago this month.

Stellantis owns a panoply of global brands, from Alfa Romeo and Maserati to Chrysler and Vauxhall. Its Cheshire site was best known for its giant sign saying Vauxhall Ellesmere Port - Home of the Astra. Now there’s another sign - Electrifying Britain.

Stellantis Ellesmere Port is now the UK’s biggest plant dedicated entirely to electric vehicles, with more than 1,000 people working onsite, and plant director Diane Miller said the group had invested £100m in its transformation.

She told the automotive leaders that this is a “pivotal moment in automotive industry and we need to make a difference”. And she told them: “As industry leaders we have the power and responsibility to lead this change”.

Ellesmere Port now focuses on electric cars and vans, including the Vauxhall Combo-e Life and Citroën e-Berlingo.

The transformation has even included reducing the plant’s physical footprint to make it more efficient - the site’s bodyshop was moved to a space a fifth the size of its original home.

Stellantis has also made a point of reusing and reallocating equipment from across the group, rather than scrapping or buying afresh - Ms Miller said one of Ellesmere Port’s injection moulding machines came from a plant in Serbia.

The luxury car market is also looking to become more sustainable - as shown by the transformation project underway at Bentley, in Crewe.

Andreas Lehe, board member for manufacturing at Bentley, said: “The original Bentley boys were pioneers and leaders”.

And he said he wanted Bentley to be the “world benchmark for luxury cars”, and to become a leader in sustainable luxury mobility.

Mr Lehe - who joked: “I’m an engineer, I like processes, so let’s go through step by step”., talked the conference through the company’s road map to decarbonisation, which was launched in 2011. In the past decade, Bentley has helped cut the amount of waste going to landfill by 99%, and by using rainwater harvesting has been able to cut water use by 69%.

Bentley is spending £300m over 5 years in transforming the plant - including the creation of its multicoloured “dream factory” paint shop.

Later, Mr Lehe was asked about how companies such as Bentley could balance the push towards electric vehicles with continuing demand in some parts of the world for ICE vehicles.

He said the group would retain the flexibility to produce electric and ICE cars. And he added: ““In the luxury sector you could not force people in a direction (to buy electric cars) because they do not like to be forced. They like to make a decision.”

It’s not just passenger vehicles that are going electric - lorries and commercial vehicles will also need to evolve.

Peter Ahrens, managing director of Lancashire’s Leyland Trucks, said the industry was starting its move away from traditional ICE vehicles, looking at electric power and alternative fuel sources.

He said: “One thing that is for certain is that we will not have the one-size fits all route we have seen with diesel engines”

He said ICE enghones would continue to exist, becoming cleaner and more efficient, while smaller vans could switch to hybrid engines. Biofuels and other alternative fuels could become more widespread, with Government support, but Mr Ahrens said battery electric vehicles (BEV) would be “dominant” in the medium term.

Even for that to happen, he said, there would need to be more investment in more public electric charging infrastructure.

Leyaland is now part of US group Paccar, which Mr Ahrens proudly said had delivered annual profits for 85 consecutive years. Last year the Paccar group delivered more than 200,000 truck globally.

Mr Ahrens said: “Paccar believes in BEV solutions and we will continue to invest”. But he said the group was also investing in the development of other technologies, adding: “We have proven that hydrogen combustion engines work”.

Mr Ahrens ended with a series of “calls to action” to suppliers and partners in the industry. He urged suppliers to do their bit in greening the industry, and said: “I cannot produce a carbon neutral lorry without all of you producing carbon neutral parts”.

The most high-profile automotive firms in the North West are the big brands such as JLR and Vauxhall. But those firms could not operate without a network of suppliers and logistics firms, large and small.

The second session of the conference featured speakers two key partner businesses alongside Mr Leeks from JLR and Mr Meyers from Ford.

Paul Cross, senior business development director - auto-mobility at DHL, talked about his company’s work in the automotive ecosystem in areas from just in time delivery to specialist battery storage.

The company has facilities at Liverpool docks, and also has a facility at Skelmersdale that it is looking to develop into “the next EV centre of excellence”.

Adient makes seats for car manufacturers including Nissan and Toyota, with dedicated factories near those firms’ UK manufacturing sites. Its Liverpool site supplies JLR’s Halewood complex.

Steve Semple, Adient platform director for JLR, Nissan and Toyota, explained his company's ongoing work to improve its environmental performance - including cutting energy and water use at its Liverpool site.

He said Adient engineers were also working to make seats greener, such as looking to use more recycled metals and discovering new ways to recycle or reuse foam.

The Sinclair C5 was on show on a stand run by Forteq, which made plastic parts for the vehiocle and has remained one of the leading global parts suppliers to the automotive sector.

Earlier in the day, SMMT CEO Mike Hawes laughed when asked whether the C5 and its high-profile failure had set back the development of EVs.

“It was before my time,” he smiled. “You can always go back and look at history - look at some of the old editions of Tomorrow's World, and what we were going to be doing in the future. Some of it was quite prescient, other ideas were just cul de sacs.”

It has taken some time for EVs to go mainstream. But now they have, and North West manufacturers are leading the way.

Mr Haews said: “Electric vehicles, even going back 20 years, were very limited in range, very small, one or two seats. Whereas now, just about any vehicle segment you can think of, including heavy-duty trucks, is electrifying. And it shows you how fast the technology has been advancing. And it will still get better.”

Founder of North Somerset plastics firm retires at 59 after selling off business

Recommend