In a Somerset field, with a distant view on one side of Hinckley Point nuclear power station (under construction) and on the other side the windswept grassy folds of Glastonbury Tor, lies the future of the British car industry. It is possibly also the foundation of our future economic resilience, at what is a troubled moment in the global economy.<\/p>\n
Right now the site is a lattice of hulking steel frames covering an area the size of 30 football pitches, interspersed with cranes, earth movers and drainage channels.<\/p>\n
From next year, it will be the Agratas electric vehicles battery facility, the UK’s largest gigafactory, manufacturing cells for electric vehicle batteries, that will go on to power Jaguar Land Rover’s electric vehicle fleet.<\/p>\n
For successive governments this investment from India’s Tata Group has been a \u00a35bn triumph of industrial policy, but it is also a minimum requirement to secure the future of British car manufacturing.<\/p>\n That’s a sector that came in for a bit of a shock this week with the release of data that showed that a Chinese car – the Jaecoo 7 – was the number one car in the UK for the first time ever.<\/p>\n The Jaecoo 7 is a medium-sized petrol or hybrid SUV. But Chinese imports have more generally been of electric vehicles, and the numbers are as remarkable. Chinese-owned brands have made up one in seven new UK cars, about 15% so far in 2026. Five years ago this was 1.3%.<\/p>\n The news about the Jaecoo came in the same week Business Secretary Peter Kyle was visiting the Agratas site to confirm a \u00a3380m grant to the company.<\/p>\n I wanted to hear his thoughts on this wave of Chinese imports: was it good for consumers or bad? What about for governments? They are questions I’ve been grappling with for three years.<\/a><\/p>\n The government’s message is that “Britain should not fear” the rise of Chinese imports.<\/p>\n “I don’t want to prevent UK consumers having access to cars of their choice,” Kyle told me.<\/p>\n He was watching out for any trade distortions, he said, but was also focusing on encouraging the “huge opportunites” for jobs and investment from Chinese car makers who have expressed interest in setting up factories in the UK.<\/p>\n “If the conditions are right, I would absolutely welcome [Chinese investment]” he told me. He compared it to Japan’s car industry in the 1990s.<\/p>\n But the UK’s car production has halved over the past decade. And there have been some concerns about whether domestic production can compete, as well as over possible data and national security implications.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>
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