The APCs of greener transportation

How is the automotive industry meeting the lofty government goals that new diesel and petrol cars and vans will no longer be sold from 2030, and that all new cars and vans must be fully zero emission at the tailpipe from 2035? Will Stirling interviews Ian Constance, CEO of the Advanced Propulsion Centre

Often mere words do not do the task justice. The transition to net zero automotive – think about that for a minute.

The easy part is to visualise switching powertrains from petrol and diesel to electric (EVs), then designing and building processes for the mass volume manufacture of EVs – a huge engineering challenge. But this complexity covers materials, batteries and gigafactories, electric machines and drives, rare earths, power electronics, fuel cells, and more, such as their supply chain viability.

Then there is the charging and hydrogen fuelling infrastructure. Supply chain security of key materials, including rare earth materials mined in just a few global locations, R&D investment in the right areas, technology scale-up, geopolitical risk, and market reaction to new technology. An important actor in this complex landscape is the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), the government agency tasked with managing funding programmes, judging applications and assisting companies that have good, low-carbon tech solutions.

The APC administers the Automotive Transformation Fund, a £1bn+ fund to help eligible companies make the low carbon transition. It has run a suite of projects, funds and accelerator programmes since 2013. CEO Ian Constance needs to juggle all these balls, and the clock is ticking, but he spared 30 minutes for MTD magazine.

Ian says: “The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC)’s mission is to enable the UK to stay at the forefront of the global transition to smarter, safer, and importantly, more sustainable automotive and mobility solutions. The other part of APC is Zenzic, an agency investigating future-related, autonomous mobility – driverless vehicles.”

What are the net zero automotive trends as we head towards 2025? “In the last 12 months, we’ve gone from a position of very high growth to flatlining and a bit of stagnation in the EV market, so what you’re seeing there is a shift back towards HEVs (hybrid) and PHEVs (plug-in hybrids). I believe that is a short or medium-term shift and is driven by a few factors including rising populism in politics. But given the money and plans put into getting to net zero, we will find our way back to growth in BEV, battery electric vehicles.

MTD readers are interested in the net zero automotive shift generally, and in manufacturing opportunities specifically. Recently the APC produced a report on the electric motor market, and the change in motor technology – indicating there is a slow shift from the dominance of permanent magnet synchronous motors to non-magnet motors like induction motors. Do both provide good opportunities for UK engineering businesses?

“We have some very capable businesses that are scaling up here,” says Constance. “One of them is AEM, Advanced Electric Machines, based in the Northeast, who are developing magnet-free motors. In general, we have a very strong traction motor community in the UK comprised of various companies that are developing tech in this space, and a lot of them are using magnetic rare earth materials. There is Yasa in Oxfordshire, Protean in the Southwest who specialise in in-wheel electric motors, and there are plenty of others as well. So, the motor manufacturing opportunities are massive for the UK.”

“Ford is investing heavily in Halewood, with support from the APC. They are turning this big factory from a manual transmission plant, clearly a technology that’s intimately linked with internal combustion engines, over to electric drive units at high volume for export. Ford is doing that because it sees the UK as an important place to put that technology and create that mass volume.”

“On the motor technology shift: Permanent magnet motors are generally high performance and are lower cost (than rival tech) at this stage. They need rare earth materials. The non rare earth magnet motors, and non-magnet motors (induction and electrically excited synchronous motors), are an important hedge against the volatility of rare earth material prices and supply, which is expected to go through the roof. That volatility and the geopolitical angle is a hedge that that many people want to make sure that they’re on the right side of.”

Rare earth reliability, and gigafactories for specialist vehicles

A big, less visible part of the APC’s work is research and policy work into securing these essential materials. As rare earth supply is dominated by China and a handful of countries in much smaller volumes, supply security is paramount.

“You need to mine the ore, the raw stuff, in a clean and sustainable way, then you have to process the materials into rare earths, then into magnet materials, produce magnets, which are then used in the motor – it’s a classic supply chain, with risks. We (the UK) are looking to create those supply chains back to friendly nations that we feel we can make long-term strategic partnerships with. The processing part of it is as important as the availability of the materials.”

The mainstream net-zero automotive news has been dominated by gigafactories, so-called in reference to the capacity of the batteries made there. Building these factories in countries that manufacture EVs is essential, due to the dollar and carbon costs of shipping batteries, plus these are vast investments, and create thousands of jobs and supplier contracts. The UK’s gigafactory picture is, some might say, behind its European peers following the loss of Britishvolt in 2023.

Constance contests whether Britain is far behind the pack. “We (the UK) had the first gigafactory in Europe, a small one in the Northeast with just over one gigawatt hour (GWh) that supports the Nissan Leaf. Yes, the UK footprint is confined to two new massive gigafactory commitments, one which is Envision AESC and linked to Nissan, and the second is Agritas, part of the Tata Group, in the Southwest. Look at the potential of those two facilities, they could jointly produce over 70 GWh of battery cells.
Our forecast is that by 2030 we will need around 90-95 GWh, so we are well on our way to fulfilling these requirements.

“But these things are never that simple, are they? Two of our biggest vehicle manufacturers, Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover, will be certainly supported by those two gigafactories. We will need more to look after some of the bigger carmakers, but also very importantly, specialist vehicle manufacturers, which is such a strength of the UK; sports cars, luxury, and heavy-duty vehicles and off-road machines – all of those are going to need a supply of batteries. If people need a specialist vehicle, they might want a specialist battery. So getting into that specialist battery domain is a real focus for the future.”

With batteries also come materials, and lithium is the primary base material for battery anodes and cathodes. But lithium, like rare earths, has a limited supply chain. “There are several different flavours of lithium battery. Beyond that, sodium is the next best element, but it has limitations. We are going to be dominated by lithium, particularly in the UK that has medium-to-high mass production vehicles. That’s where the attention should be.”

Hydrogen’s changing role

Hydrogen has had an interesting story. It was the wonder material for about three years, then media interest seemed to cool as the hype cycle shifted. How is it now developing in the UK car market?
“We are increasingly asked to fund and look at projects involving hydrogen and hydrogen propulsion, much of that is around fuel cells,” says Constance. “Some of it is around hydrogen combustion that’s more suitable for off-highway and construction.”

“The APC’s view is that fast forward another 10 years, most light-duty vehicles (vans and cars) will be battery electric. Then medium-duty trucks will have a mixture of battery electric and potentially hydrogen fuel vehicles, and for heavy-duty, long distance 40 tonners, etc – there’s a big case for hydrogen combustion there.”

There are three legs to this stool: the availability of the technology on the vehicle to do the job cost-effectively and efficiently, the availability of the infrastructure to support the delivery of whatever the energy medium is – hydrogen or electricity. And the third bit is, making the conditions right for the market. You need the three legs together.”

Finally, what other manufacturing opportunities are there for subcontract companies in the EV transition?
“Three areas, I’d highlight,” says Constance. “Giga-castings is a rising area of light-weighting and efficient vehicle manufacturing. Tesla reimagined the way cars are built by using massive front end and rear end castings rather than spot welding or bonding aluminium sections together. Can we develop more of that?
Also the design of drives shafts is changing for an EV powertrain. There is growth of driverless pods operating in in secure space or in semi-secure space like airports. This is a step in completely reimagining a vehicle into lightweight, highly manoeuvrable modes of transport.

Although these are complex machines, the barriers to entry here are lower than for developing a mass-market vehicle.”