Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank that is all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment. I'm Emma McKelvey, policy assistant at Green Alliance. In this episode, I chat with Ian Constance from the Advanced Propulsion Centre, who provide funding and support across

the electric vehicle supply chain.

We discuss what the automotive sector needs to get an electric vehicle supply chain here in

the UK.

We explore why domestic battery production is key, the need for the UK to de-risk investment

in battery manufacturing and the upcoming opportunities that the sector can take

advantage of. I feel like we've been hearing a lot about gigafactories and the need for battery

investment in the UK feels like it's become a bit of a buzz topic recently. And basically, I just wanted to understand from your point of view,

why is it important to have battery manufacturing here in the UK? And is it kind of crucial to the

survival of the automotive industry in the UK as we move to electric vehicles?

I think it is really important for the automotive sector for the future that we have batteries.

I mean, there's a number of things. As we transition now, we have a very strong view that in the future,

the automotive sector cars and vans, the light duty vehicles that we all drive in that sort of represent the biggest volume element of what we see on our roads will be driven by battery electric vehicles.

And the biggest value element of those vehicles will be the battery. The batteries are expensive, they're heavy, they're bulky things.

And they have a lot of really kind of smart technology in them in the terms of the chemistry that goes into them and that means that if you're making cars you want to have them close by because you don't want to be transporting these very expensive very bulky very heavy things all around the world for a number number of reasons, first of all, it adds to cost,

it adds to the amount of working capital that you need to have if you have long supply chains.

The embedded carbon that are in these battery systems that go into the vehicles will be much more

if you have to transport them around the world.

And just the cost and the logistics of doing it become increasingly difficult.

So I think there is very much of you from the industry that you need to make batteries where you

make cars.

So it's both from a kind of cost perspective, but also from that carbon perspective as well of having to

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