The Faraday Institution has announced that it will be providing up to £42m in new government funding to four UK-based consortiums to conduct research aimed at overcoming battery-related obstacles to the uptake of the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. 

A team of the UK’s leading battery experts from universities across the UK will contribute to the work which will be enabled by £42m funding provided by the independent national battery research facility.

The funding was announced at the Royal Society conference on energy storage for automotive and grids. 

Business minister Richard Harrington said, “With 200,000 electric vehicles set to be on UK roads by the end of 2018 and worldwide sales growing by 45% in 2016, investment in car batteries is a massive opportunity for Britain and one that is estimated to be worth £5bn by 2025.”

Peter Littlewood, founding executive chair of the Faraday Institution, said: “To deliver the much needed improvement in air quality in our cities and achieve our aspiration for cleaner energy targets we need to shift to electric vehicles quickly. These research programmes will help the UK achieve this”

The Faraday Institution is the UK’s independent national battery research institute, and was established as part of the Government’s £246mn investment in battery technology through the Industrial Strategy. Its formation was announced in October 2017 by the business secretary Greg Clark.