Clean‑transport bets diverge
The UK awarded about $510 million to Tata Agratas for a Somerset EV battery gigafactory even as Toyota, Daimler Truck and Volvo pressed hydrogen fuel cells for heavy trucks and several automakers race to commercialise solid‑state batteries by 2027. These announcements show governments and manufacturers splitting investment across batteries for passenger vehicles, hydrogen for heavy duty use cases, and solid‑state as a future battery step. ( )
Britain is putting public money behind electric car batteries even as truck makers and automakers split their next big bets between hydrogen and solid-state cells. (gov.uk) The British government said on April 9 it would give Agratas, Tata Group’s battery business, a £380 million grant for its Somerset factory, part of a wider £470 million package for battery and vehicle projects. The plant is billed as the United Kingdom’s biggest gigafactory and is expected to supply batteries for Jaguar Land Rover and other manufacturers. (gov.uk) A gigafactory is a battery plant built at car-industry scale, turning out enough cells to feed hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. Britain’s subsidy filing said the Agratas grant is meant to support construction of an electric-vehicle battery factory in Somerset through 2035. (gov.uk) At the same time, Toyota moved toward hydrogen trucks on March 31, when Daimler Truck and Volvo Group said Toyota aims to join their fuel-cell venture, cellcentric, as an equal shareholder. The companies said cellcentric is intended to develop, produce and commercialise fuel-cell systems for heavy-duty trucks and other demanding transport uses. (daimlertruck.com) A fuel cell makes electricity onboard from hydrogen, more like a power plant than a battery pack, and the truck can be refueled instead of recharged. Daimler Truck said it sees hydrogen-powered trucking as a key part of long-haul transport, while keeping battery-electric trucks in its lineup for other routes. (daimlertruck.com) Automakers are also chasing a third lane: solid-state batteries, which replace the liquid inside today’s lithium-ion cells with a solid material. Toyota said in October 2025 that it is aiming for a market launch of battery-electric vehicles with all-solid-state batteries in 2027 to 2028. (global.toyota) Nissan’s timeline is later. Nissan says it aims to launch an electric vehicle with in-house all-solid-state batteries by fiscal year 2028, and says the chemistry could roughly double energy density versus conventional lithium-ion batteries. (nissan-global.com) Honda is still at the production-line stage rather than a launch date in 2027. Honda says it has built a demonstration line in Sakura, Japan, to develop all-solid-state batteries toward mass production for future electric vehicles. (hondanews.com) Mercedes-Benz has shown the technology on the road but not in showrooms. In September 2025, the company said an EQS test car with a lithium-metal solid-state battery drove 1,205 kilometers, or 749 miles, from Stuttgart to Malmö without a charging stop. (group.mercedes-benz.com) The split reflects how the transport market is breaking up by job: battery factories for passenger cars now, hydrogen for some heavy trucks, and solid-state cells as a possible next step later in the decade. For governments and manufacturers, the spending is no longer going into one winner, but into several technologies on different clocks. (gov.uk) (daimlertruck.com) (global.toyota)
