Sometimes, the Government gets it right. Forget, for a second, the innate annoyance that acronyms engender, and consider OLEV, the Office for Low Emission Vehicles, part of the great DfT umbrella. This very unsexy organisation – why not “Team Emissions!”, or, “Your Planet, Our Mission!”, or whatever, instead of an Office for anything? – has released £30m of funding recently, right into the beating heart of British automotive innovation, like an injection of adrenalin into the vein of the economy.
MAY 05th 2016
Erin Baker – When The Government Gets It Right!
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More than 130 companies and research organisations, which are thinking up new ways to stop the transport sector damaging the planet, have benefitted from this round of pocket money.
What’s particularly satisfying about public money coming back into the public arena this time round, is that it’s not just the big hitters who can put together the biggest lobbying funding, who are getting the cash. It’s the little tiddlers in the pool, the regional Tier Two suppliers, the labs where the science takes place and so on, who are benefitting.
So, yes, a consortium led by Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan will get £1.7m to investigate ways of mass-manufacturing lightweight materials such as carbon-fibre, but Sheffield-based Faradion Ltd (never heard of them, but I’m glad the Department for Transport has) and its consortium got £1.3m to investigate chapter sodium-ion technology, used in electric vehicle batteries. And a company in Horsham, Sussex, called Ceres Power got £7770,000 to test new fuel cells for vans. Sunamp Ltd, a company near Edinburgh, can now lead a team to transform chilled or frozen food fleets using 'thermal store' technology to minimise battery power used to keep food deliveries fresh. Clean Air Power, in Lancashire has got the cash now to apply greener dual-fuel technologies to HGVs, cutting emissions on freight deliveries. And a company called Advanced Design Technology will lead a project team to develop thermal recovery kits that capture waste heat from the exhaust and turn it into electricity.
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This all sounds exceedingly boring, I grant you, and a far cry from the sexiness that is the eight teams building Formula One cars in this country, or the global design studios for manufacturers, or the global HQs for Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and more.
But it’s a short, short step from one to the other. Behind each glorious new car on the road is a huge industry, a cake of many layers, with the bottom-feeders doing the hard graft to ensure that the surfers at the top have access to the best technology, giving them the best stab at lower emissions, alternative powertrains and therefore that magic industry word, “sustainability”.
Good on old OLEV; long may the cash continue to pour in.
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