Recharge Industries, the Australian company that bought BritishVolt earlier this year, has failed to make the final payment required to buy the company. BritishVolt is Britain’s only homegrown electric vehicle battery startup flailing – despite a UK government pledge of £100 million in tax breaks and subsidies in 2020 with the hope of kickstarting a green revolution. The deal was finalised in February, with the final payment from Recharge due on 5 April. Recharge’s parent, Scale Facilitation, denies the company has defaulted on the deal, claiming the final payment was linked to the closing of a funding facility and that it anticipated the deal would close this month. We shall see. The truth is setting up battery gigafactories far from raw materials sources and insulated from customers by Brexit isn’t easy.
Photograph: Alamy