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AUTOMOTIVE DEBATE IN ASSOCIATION WITH:


PRESENT: Richard Slater


Lancashire Business View (Chair)


Daniel Miller CoolKit


Ben Duckworth Greenarc


Miles Roberts Chorley Group


Darran Harris CheckedSafe


Claire Shore Blackburn College Paul Jones


Northern Automotive Alliance


Zowi Whittaker Fox Group


Will Maden FUUSE


Michael Yerbury Blackburn College


KEEPING IN THE FAST LANE


We brought our panel of experts to the Hybrid Electric Auto Training centre (HEAT) at Blackburn College to discuss the challenges facing the county’s automotive sector, including the drive to reach net zero


What are the key challenges in the automotive, transport and logistics sector and how are we meeting them?


PJ: The ‘wheeled vehicle’ industry in general is undergoing the biggest change in the last 100 years, since we moved from steam to petrol and diesel, and against a tight and ambitious timescale.


We know we have to decarbonise to address climate change. We’ve got a very aggressive timescale, 2035 for cars. We are also the only country in the world that’s got a deadline for trucks. Trucks up to 26 tonnes must be zero emission by 2035 and all trucks by 2040.


So, there is a lot of work to do in terms of pivoting the industry, in terms of the manufacturers and putting the infrastructure in place, which is one of the big challenges. So is convincing the general public of the need to move into electric vehicles.


MR: The problem is everyone is resistant to change in everything. Cars are quite an emotive thing because it’s a large purchase, it’s something you spend lots of money on, it’s got


prestige and a premium attached to it.


I’ve been driving electric cars for the last nine or ten years. My wife has an electric car. If I could get my son insured on an electric car, he’d have one as his first car.


There is a fear of the technology and so many false and negative stories going around.


BD: The corporate demand is still strong. In defence of the traditional fuel industry, they’re quite positive and pro electric vehicles. If you look at what Shell is working on, it is rapidly decarbonising stations and building charging stations. It’s very much part of its strategy.


We find a lot of the negativity around electric vehicles comes from people who simply cannot afford to purchase one.


DM: We’re coming out of a period of really constrained supply of vehicles of all types after Covid, following the shortage of semiconductors that we saw for a period of time. We’re now in a period where the supply of vehicles from the OEMs has really improved, so that’s good for our business because it means there are more vehicles for us to convert.


However, finding qualified, skilled people to do that work is a real challenge for us. As these vehicles become more and more technologically advanced, as the OEM wants us to use their platform a lot more, we need to understand and drive that innovation through our business as well.


To do that we need good design engineers, good technical engineers and really good technicians on the shop floor. Getting that next generation and training people to do that work is a real challenge for us.


ZW: We were the first business in our sector to have EV tipper vehicles in the UK. We struggle as a country because of the costs involved. We don’t get any subsidies from our government.


I was at the inaugural event for our EV supplier and there were only two UK businesses in the room. Ther rest were from Ireland because there they receive a lot of incentives.


The infrastructure is not here to utilise them in the way that we need to and the cost is so prohibitive. Even now, looking at alternative fuels to electricity, when we start talking


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