Recently John Llewellyn wrote a very interesting column for the eceee on the impressive improvements made this year by F1 racing cars. But for John the F1 experience of achieving massive fuel efficiency gains has a deeper significance: it shows what clever people can achieve when motivated and the importance of incentives. No sooner had John written the column and Henry Foy writes in the Financial Times about buses being equipped with F1 technology through funding from a UK scheme.
Plan to equip buses with F1 technology boosted by UK auto funding
GKN will receive funding to develop a system borrowed from Formula One cars to allow buses to store energy while braking and JCB will develop a similar system to recover energy from hydraulic arms on its diggers.
Proposals to use Formula One technology to make buses and diggers use less energy are among the first funded under a £1bn scheme to make the UK a world leader in environmentally friendly vehicles.
The funding is part of a broad government strategy designed to keep the UK car industry at the forefront of new technological developments, and continue its spectacular rebound from close to collapse to rude health over the past decade.
Led by a resurgent Jaguar Land Rover and investment in British plants by Nissan, Toyota and BMW, the industry has defied a prolonged and painful decline in the wider European automotive sector by increasing its focus on technology and high-end vehicles.
Four energy-efficient projects will receive a total of £28.8m in grants to support investments of £133m, business secretary Vince Cable will announce on Wednesday, as part of a 10-year funding commitment unveiled last year that the government says could secure up to 30,000 jobs in the industry.
Global carmakers are under increasing pressure from regulators to develop viable, long-term replacements for combustion engines and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
The UK’s recent boom in car production – from less than 1m cars built in 2009 to an estimated 2m in 2017 – has protected jobs and brought in billions of pounds worth of investment but has relied heavily on producing more premium, powerful, oil-fuelled cars, such as the Mini and JLR’s Range Rover, not low-emission, green vehicles.
The government hopes its cash injection will help make the UK a hotbed of research into new technologies, which could include electric motors and hydrogen-powered engines.
“The next generation of cars, buses and diggers will be powered by radically different technologies and I want them to be developed here in Britain,” Mr Cable said. “These projects will be the first of many to receive funding . . . to turn technologies into products.”
As part of the first tranche of funding under the umbrella of the government’s Advanced Propulsion Centre scheme, component manufacturer GKN will receive funding to develop a system borrowed from Formula 1 cars to allow buses to store energy while braking. JCB will also develop a similar system to recover energy from hydraulic arms on its yellow diggers.
The two other grants were awarded to US carmaker Ford, to upgrade its highly successful, low-emission EcoBoost engine, and Cummins, the engine maker. Another £75m worth of grants will be available in the second round of allocations this year, Mr Cable will announce on Wednesday.
The government’s targeted support for the car industry, which mirrors similar initiatives to promote the aerospace and pharmaceutical sectors, comes as industry executives fret over an acute skills crunch, especially in the country’s supply chain, which lags behind European rivals such as Germany and France.
