The Future UK Car Industry

For the last one hundred years, the car industry has been a key part of our manufacturing capability. It may not have been profitable all the time, but we are still proud of it, particularly our performance in Formula 1.

We have the whole ecosystem because we have been doing it for years, starting on disused RAF airfields like Goodwood and Silverstone. We now have many of the engineers, companies and drivers. It would seem that, with current development, we may have the fastest trucks in the world.

For this electric future, we need all sorts of electric vehicles. At the moment, the best self-driving cars seem to be Waymo, and in the UK Waymo are using Jaguars.

So that looks after the top end of the market. We also need something, in fact lots of somethings, possibly electric tuk-tuks from India and vehicles like the Citroën Ami. Then we need something in between, not forgetting goods vehicles.

It is time to look ahead. Since we ship luxury automobiles to the United States, we require electric motors that are not produced in China, and we need them now.

So we have two motor industries: one to provide the cheapest cars to people who want to own a car, and the other to provide self-driving cars.

It looks like a battle between the cost of collisions, including the full cost of road closures and delays, versus the personal independence we have become used to.