The Warwick Manufacturing Group (www2.warwick.ac.uk) is to lead a £14 million consortium to establish a new automotive battery-pack manufacturing research centre. Innovate UK (formerly the Technology Strategy Board) has provided £10 million of funding.

The organisations that will help to develop the next generation of traction batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles include: Jaguar Land Rover; JCB; Alexander Dennis; Ariel Motor Co; Delta Motorsport; Potenza Technology; RDVS; Trackwise; Horiba MIRA; the University of Oxford; and Axion Recycling.

WMG chairman Professor Lord Bhattacharyya said: “The global energy-storage market will be worth $50 billion by 2020, of which $21 billion will be in transportation. Automotive is well on the way to displacing consumer electronics as the biggest user of energy storage.

“This project will play a significant role in the evolution of that market, by creating a UK supply chain for battery packs to suit hybrid and electric vehicles requiring volumes from hundreds to thousands of units per year. It will also create a lasting facility at WMG for the development of future battery packs.”

Professor David Greenwood (pictured), who joined the WMG from Ricardo UK Ltd, where he was Head of Hybrid and Electric Systems, said: “The volumes of battery packs traditionally required in this market have not justified the high levels of development cost and effort.

“By developing a modular battery architecture based on cylindrical cells for both high-power and high-energy requirements, the supply chain will be able to aggregate demand for components from many applications and benefit from significant economies of scale.

“This project will create a battery supply chain with mass-production standards of robustness that is high-quality, low-cost and fast to market.”