Skip to main content

St. Andrews gets £12m to develop EV battery

The UK’s University of St. Andrews has received £12 million to lead a project on the development of a sodium ion battery for electric vehicles (EV). The four-year Nexgenna project is seeking to commercialise a safe sodium ion battery which offers low cost and long cycle life. The university says the solution could enable EVs to travel further and allow electric trains to run on non-electrified lines, making rural routes in the Scottish Highlands commercially viable. The funding body announced the inve
September 10, 2019 Read time: 1 min

The UK’s University of St. Andrews has received £12 million to lead a project on the development of a sodium ion battery for electric vehicles (EV).

The four-year Nexgenna project is seeking to commercialise a safe sodium ion battery which offers low cost and long cycle life.

The university says the solution could enable EVs to travel further and allow electric trains to run on non-electrified lines, making rural routes in the Scottish Highlands commercially viable.

The funding body announced the investment as part of a £55m funding round for research into energy storage.

Other partners involved in the project include Lancaster University, the University of Cambridge, University College London, the University of Sheffield and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Related Content

  • UK university project paves the way for smarter cities and autonomous cars
    February 1, 2016
    The new i-Motors project, led by academics from the University of Nottingham’s Geospatial Institute and Human Factors Research Group and digital technology company Control F1, aims to build a mobile platform that allows vehicles of different manufacturers and origins to transfer and store data. The project, which has received a US$1.9 million award from the UK’s innovation agency Innovate UK sets out to establish a set of universal standards on how vehicles communicate with each other, and with other ma
  • ACE report: private sector and user-pay for English roads
    May 16, 2018
    It’s one minute to midnight for funding England’s roads, according to a timely new report - and the clock’s big hand is pointing to some form of user-pay solution, reports David Arminas. Is there any way out of future user-pay funding for England’s highway infrastructure? The answer is a resounding ‘no’, according to the recently-published report Funding Roads for the Future. The 25-page document by the London-based Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) calls for a radical rethink about how to
  • WMG to put battery-powered rail-based vehicle on track
    March 21, 2019
    WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) and Transport Design International are developing a battery-powered rail-based vehicle on behalf of Coventry City Council in the UK. WMG, an academic department at the University of Warwick, is hoping that the 15-passenger very light rail (VLR) will eventually operate without a timetable and allow people to hop on and off. Councillor Jim O’Boyle, cabinet member for jobs and regeneration, says: “It will be much more affordable to install than traditional trams, take
  • US university investigates smart car tyres
    January 15, 2016
    Researchers at Virginia Tech, Penn State University, and 12 industry partners are collaborating on a US$1.2 million National Science Foundation-funded project to integrate sensors into car tyres, with the aim of providing information on the vehicle’s speed and road conditions. Saied Taheri, an associate professor of mechanical engineering in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering and the director of the Center for Tire Research (CenTiRe), is the project’s lead investigator. Taheri has been working for