Boris Johnson’s Brexit car crash has wrecked our automobile industry

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The giant Stellantis group, which is essentially what we used to know as Peugeot, but which now owns vast swathes of the global car industry including Vauxhall’s electric vehicle production in the UK, is quite explicit. In a leaked memo, Stellantis openly discusses the future of the plant at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, which now makes electric vehicles, and the wider domestic industry: “If the cost of EV Manufacturing in the UK becomes uncompetitive… operations will close. In fact, the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement recognises that globalisation means few products are nationally “pure”, and allows for a generous limit on the proportion of electric vehicle components that can be made outside of Europe for manufacturers in the UK to benefit from tariff-free trade. The Stellantis plant marks the new age of cheap and efficient mass-produced electric vehicles.” “And I could not be more proud of the fact that, in just a couple of years from now, your packages will be gliding silently to your door in an electric van marked ‘Made in Great Britain’.” What went wrong was that the UK never developed a viable domestic automotive battery business and has had to import too many from China.