With the Indian conglomerate planning to invest more than £4 billion (about $5.17 billion) in the project, the Tata Group will build a sizable facility for the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries in the United Kingdom.
The U.K.’s efforts to secure its own supply of EV batteries as it attempts to transition away from vehicles that use gasoline and diesel have been given a huge boost by the news.
The U.K. government stated in a statement on Wednesday that the factory would produce batteries for Jaguar Land Rover, a division of Tata Motors, and maybe 4,000 direct jobs. There are also plans to target additional European and British clients.
The government stated that this investment “will be crucial to boosting the UK’s capacity for battery manufacturing needed to support the electric vehicle industry in the long term.”
“With an initial output of 40GWh, it will also provide almost half of the battery production that the Faraday Institution estimates the UK will need by 2030,” it continued.
The gigafactory will be among the biggest in all of Europe. The goal is to begin manufacturing in 2026. Batteries for electric vehicles are produced in massive quantities in so-called gigafactories. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is largely acknowledged as having invented the phrase.
Grant Shapps, the minister of state for energy security and net zero, said in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday morning that the news was “certainly the biggest U.K. car investment in 40 years” and “a big vote of confidence in the British economy.”
When pressed for the incentive given to Tata’s value, Shapps said only that it was “large and… I make no bones about that,” declining to provide an actual number. The data, he continued, “will come out in the usual way, because of the commercial sensitivity.”
By 2030, the U.K. intends to stop selling new diesel and gasoline cars and vans, and starting in 2035, it wants all new vehicles to have zero tailpipe emissions.
Those in the sector hailed the news of the gigafactory ambitions.
“This is a shot in the arm for the UK automotive industry, our economy, and British manufacturing jobs, demonstrating the country is open for business and electric vehicle production,” said Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
The move to electrification in the global sector, he continued, “comes at a critical time.”
Hawes stated that domestic battery production was “critical if we are to anchor wider vehicle production here for the long term.”
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