£42m Faraday Challenge funding announced

Fri 26 January 2018 View all news

The Faraday Institution has announced that it will be providing up to £42 million in new government funding to four UK-based consortia to conduct research aimed at overcoming battery-related obstacles to the uptake of the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. 

A team of the UK’s leading battery experts from universities across the UK will contribute to the work which will be enabled by £42 million funding provided by the independent national battery research facility. Announced at the Royal Society conference on energy storage for automotive and grids, the work will encompass four initial projects, focused respectively on solid-state electrodes, battery modelling, degradation, and recycling. 

Business Minister Richard Harrington said, “With 200,000 electric vehicles set to be on UK roads by the end of 2018 and worldwide sales growing by 45 per cent in 2016, investment in car batteries is a massive opportunity for Britain and one that is estimated to be worth £5 billion by 2025.

Peter B. Littlewood, founding executive chair of the Faraday Institution, said: “To deliver the much needed improvement in air quality in our cities and achieve our aspiration for cleaner energy targets we need to shift to electric vehicles quickly. These research programmes will help the UK achieve this”

The topics for the four projects were chosen in consultation with industry, who will partner closely with each of them. This unique collaboration will help to ensure that the research is producing findings and solutions that meet the needs of business. In addition, industrial partners will contribute a total of £4.6 million in in-kind support to the following four projects:

  • Recycling and reuse 
  • Extending battery life
  • Battery system modelling 
  • Next generation solid state batteries

The Faraday Institution is the UK’s independent national battery research institute, and was established as part of the Government’s £246 million investment in battery technology through the Industrial Strategy. Its formation was announced in October 2017 by the Business Secretary Greg Clark.

Related Links

< Back to news list