Tata Group To Build $5B Gigafactory In UK

Indian multinational conglomerate Tata Group will build a massive facility for the production of electric car batteries in the United Kingdom, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Tata will invest more than £4 billion (around $5.17 billion) in the gigafactory, a move that will significantly boost the UK’s transition from vehicles fueled by fossil fuels to those powered by low-carbon fuels. The UK government plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.

The Tata battery project will create as many as 4,000 direct jobs and provide Jaguar Land Rover--a subsidiary of Tata Motors--with EV batteries. The gigafactory will be one of Europe’s largest, and aims to commence production as early as 2026.

“This investment will be crucial to boosting the UK’s battery manufacturing capacity 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,”  the government has said.

India has lately doubled down on its clean energy investments. Last month, a venture group  backed by India’s second-largest solar energy company, Vikram Solar, announced it will invest up to $1.5 billion in the U.S. solar energy supply chain, with the first investments going to a factory in Colorado next year. The $250 million Colorado facility will be capable of producing 2 gigawatts (GW) of modules a year initially and double the capacity over time and will also create more than 900 jobs. 

Newly formed VSK Energy LLC will leverage India's extensive solar manufacturing know-how in the U.S. push to build a clean energy manufacturing sector that can compete with China. Vikram Solar Limited is one of the largest solar module manufacturers in India with 3.5 GW module manufacturing capacity annually.

"It's a great thing for us to be bringing an Indian company to the table here. You've seen a number of Indian companies get into the manufacturing space and do quite well, and Vikram is the best of them,"Sriram Das, managing director at Das & Co and chairman of the joint venture, told Reuters.

Meanwhile, India’s State-owned oil company Bharat Petroleum has approved raising up to 180 billion rupees ($2.19 billion) through an issue of equity shares as part of the government’s push into green energy. The Indian government plans to inject billions of dollars into Bharat Petroleum and its state-owned peers, Indian Oil Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. to help fund their energy transition projects.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

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