INDUSTRY INTERVIEW LORD DRAYSON
could be commercialised you could be easily pouring your hydrogen into a tank and not having to have highly pressurised solutions and that would hugely accelerate the use of hydrogen as a fuel source for cars. In terms of the new technologies related to electric cars that you are working on, do the car companies seem interested in those? Yes. One of the benefits that a company like DRT can provide to the big car companies is the opportunity to try things at an experimental level. We are building a car, testing it, using it and getting real life data. For example, we have valuable knowledge of electric motors, which are a vital part of the electric car’s future. All car companies need to know how new generation electric motors perform in tough conditions. It’s a way of trying new things. To take other industries, pharmaceutical for example. About twenty years ago, you had the revolution in genetics and molecular biology. The emerging know-how and expertise was concentrated in small university departments and bio-tech companies. The big pharma companies worked with the small bio-tech companies to understand the new technology and transfer it to them. I see the same kind of thing happening in the car industry. The car industry has huge investment in existing manufacturing processes which leads to fantastic efficiency and value for money for the consumer with a modern car. It’s a huge system that delivers that and it’s very capital intensive and slow to change. Finding a way of trying new things in smaller companies is a really important thing. I think you will see the growth of small companies like DRT providing the automotive industry with that kind of specialist knowledge and resource.
You’ve mentioned climate change, but did your spell in government provide any other particular insights? Yes. One thing was being able to get an overall perspective on where different countries sit in the global competitive landscape. From that it became clear that the UK, and Europe as a whole, is facing a huge shift in global economic power towards the east in Asia. It is therefore very important for Europe and the UK to invest in those areas of industry and technology where we have a real competitive advantage and the possibility of
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achieving growth, exports and new jobs. And we have to be continually creating and inventing to come up with the next big idea and building new companies and new businesses on the back of it. We can’t compete on price. Places like China are growing rapidly and industries like automotive are going to focus much more closely on: what does the Chinese consumer want? The UK has a very strong engineering base. To take motorsport for example, we are clearly the world’s leaders in motorsport engineering. And we need to exploit that as an R&D
SPRING 2012 proActive magazine