NAA Event Review: Automotive Transformation Developing the UK Hydrogen Vehicle Supply Chain
This month saw us visit the STFC Daresbury Laboratory for an event on developing the UK hydrogen vehicle supply chain, in conjunction with the Department for International Trade, the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC UK), NAA members ULEMCo and University of Liverpool Virtual Engineering Centre.
John Kell from the Department for International Trade Automotive Sector Team began with an overview of the dynamic ecosystem of the UK’s current hydrogen businesses, followed by the local strengths in the industrial clusters and then a summary of the UK’s hydrogen capability and current areas of research. Finally, John covered the hydrogen infrastructure and the UK supply chain and projected demand.
Paul Jones, NAA CEO, delivered the presentation on behalf of Dan Bunting, Head of Business Development at APC UK, covering the propulsion technology roadmap for heavy goods and off-highway vehicles, before focussing on the demand and opportunities in the hydrogen vehicle supply chain.
Amanda Lyne, Managing Director at NAA member ULEMCo then outlined why road transport decarbonisation requires a range of technical solutions, including hydrogen, together with its advantages in heavy duty and high utilisation use cases.
Finally, Craig Beck, Industrial Innovation Lead at NAA member, University of Liverpool Virtual Engineering Centre ran through the Cheshire & Warrington 4.0 programme (CW4.0), of which NAA is the industry partner, to outline the types of fully-funded support that is available to local SMEs to support innovation in a variety of fields, including road transport decarbonisation.
Part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), CW4.0 brings together the combined expertise and capabilities of the Virtual Engineering Centre (University of Liverpool), Liverpool John Moores University, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Northern Automotive Alliance – for more information on this programme, please contact Paul Jones – full details can be found here
