University announces £92 million National Automotive Campus

The University has announced today a £92 million National Automotive Innovation Campus (NAIC) is to be established at Warwick.

Earlier today, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, also revealed that a further £200 million of public investment would be added to the fund.

Speaking at the Tory Party Conference in Birmingham, Osborne announced: “Today we deliver with some of our leading businesses and universities £1 billion of new science investments in the areas where we lead the world”.

NAIC will be part-funded by the Government’s UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF), which supports university capital research projects, as well as Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Tata Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC).

The Chancellor granted the UKRPIF £100m of government funding in his March budget. The scheme requires that universities match any public money with at least double the amount from the private sector or charities.

JLR and TMETC, working closely with Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University “envisage a 10 times return on investment through increased value added from exploitation of research outputs in new and improved products, processes and services”, according to Warwick’s Press Office.

The University hopes that the NAIC “will create and develop novel technologies to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and to reduce CO2 emissions.”

“It will also develop a stronger supplier base in the UK.”

Commenting on the NAIC, the University’s Vice-Chancellor Nigel Thrift said: “[it] will make a significant difference not just to the automotive industry but tens of thousands of lives.”