Unipart chief mulls “pivot” to US as Britain drags heels on EV subsidies

John Neill, chairman of UK parts and logistics giant Unipart, is looking at moving the group's investment to the US or Europe because of the lack of government support for the electric vehicle market and wider green economy.

Unipart, which is based in Oxford and employs more than 8,000 people, makes vehicle parts, components and manages supply chain logistics. Its logistics arm has a host of blue chip clients including NHS Supply, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover, Sky, Airbus and JCB.

Neill, who is also on the board of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) told the BBC that America's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed last year, was offering firms a "completely game changing set of incentives and fiscal support" that was hard to ignore.

The IRA is offering billions of dollars in grants, loans, tax incentives and subsidies to support the production of goods such as electric vehicles and green energy. However to qualify recipients must manufacture in the United States.

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"I've asked our team to think very carefully about our investment strategy in the US and our US operations and whether we should be pivoting more into those markets and possibly also into our European companies," he said.

He added: "For us to invest we need to understand what Britain's strategy is and what our regulatory framework is going to be. And we're not clear about any of that."

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told the BBC that the government is not ruing out subsidies but added that “over the long run if you depend entirely on subsidies, the risk is that it's wasteful because you spend money on projects that would have happened anyway".

The government has said it will respond to the US measures when it is clear what the European Union will do.

Labour has said it will launch a British version of America’s Inflation Reduction Act, but has yet to put a figure on the amount of funding it would provide.

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