Government Green Paper on UK’s Industrial Strategy: comment

"The car industry is vital to the UK’s economy, but a failure to support the transition to electrification at pace, leaving our car industry stuck producing petrol and diesel cars that the world is increasingly turning its back on, could see hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.

“Building battery manufacturing capacity is part of the answer, but the question for government is will it pull out enough of the stops to ensure the mistakes of the 1970s and 80s, when the car industry failed to keep pace with the times, aren’t repeated. At moments like this, standing still is a recipe for a crash in the car industry”.

A report by CBI Economics commissioned by the ECIU, recently found that the UK’s car industry is currently worth £46.8bn and supports over 552,000 FTE (full time equivalent jobs). [1]

The report found that a rapid and sustained transition to building the electric vehicles that our major export markets increasingly demand could see the car industry’s contributions to the economy grow by 35%, or £16.1bn, by 2035. Conversely, a failure to support the car industry in making this transition could see the sector’s economic output collapse by 73%, or £34.1bn – with over 404,000 jobs being lost.

These findings come as the bosses of two of Europe’s biggest car manufacturers, Stellantis and VW, today warned that prolonging the transition was a “trap” that would leave car manufacturers with heavier costs on the production line. [2]