Mystery over £10m South Yorkshire supercar battery plant

The future of a planned £10m battery plant by the firm that makes engines for McLaren supercars is currently uncertain.
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Ricardo has declined to talk about the project in Rotherham, more than six months after it was revealed by The Star.

It has also withdrawn an application for a £1.98m grant from the Sheffield City Region organisation, despite it being approved.

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A Ricardo spokesman said: “Having discussed your questions with senior management, it seems that we are unable to provide any further comment at this stage.”

Ricardo engine prodction line.Ricardo engine prodction line.
Ricardo engine prodction line.

When it applied for the grant, the West Sussex company said it planned to build a £10m factory and create 53 jobs.

It came just four months after a new contract to continue supplying all McLaren engines. The supercar company opened a chassis factory on the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham in 2018 and it was assumed Ricardo would set up nearby.

McLaren intends to convert all of its cars to hybrids by 2025 as the auto industry prepares for tighter emission controls around the world. The first plug-in hybrid should hit the road late in 2020. But it has put back plans for an all-electric hypercar saying today’s battery technology would make it too heavy.

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Ricardo is a Tier One member of the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. It has an office in Sheffield, at Redlands Business Centre, on Tapton House Road in Broomhill.The Sheffield City Region’s £52m Business Investment Fund grants taxpayers’ cash to inward investors including £12m to McLaren and £5m to Boeing to help pay for a factory in Sheffield.