Britain should construct up its electric-vehicle battery trade within the coming years or it’ll lose out to the European Union within the intensifying race to construct plug-in automobiles, the nation’s automotive commerce group warned.

The Brexit deal reached on Dec. 24 provides automakers and their suppliers little time to localize manufacturing, Mike Hawes, CEO of the Society of Motor Producers and Merchants, stated in a briefing with reporters.

Battery packs must have 30 p.c of their content material sourced from the UK or EU at first to commerce tariff free as a part of the settlement, and people necessities get stricter beginning in 2024.

Hybrid and electrical autos additionally will likely be topic to guidelines of origin that begin out simpler relative to combustion automobiles, taking account a scarcity of native manufacturing of batteries now. However they too will get more durable three years from now.

The necessities put Britain’s automobile vegetation in a bind, Hawes stated. Battery packs are heavy and could be expensive to ship from vegetation within the EU, so it will likely be key to have factories within the UK feeding car-assembly websites.

For now, Britain’s battery making is proscribed to 1 web site that feeds packs to Nissan Leaf electrical hatchbacks in Sunderland, England. The startup Britishvolt introduced plans final month to construct a factory in northeast England, however the firm has launched little element on the way it will fund the venture.

Established battery producers reminiscent of LG Chem and Samsung Electronics in addition to startups together with Northvolt are planning much more capacity within the coming years elsewhere in Europe. Germany and France are among the many nationwide governments committing billions to help the tasks.