THE FUTURE Bicester Motion

CEO

Words David Lillywhite

solve a problem, where we can still travel safely, quietly, environmentally friendly, user friendly but responsibly. That’s what we can do here.”

And then there’s the Experience Quarter, which Dan likens to a first visit to an Apple Store, but for car sales: “Apple really stood out on the high street – intriguing without being overly pushy. And you’d go to hang out and look at what it had to offer, try a few things, meet your friends there and become absorbed in a demonstration – an opportunity to touch and feel what was happening. That’s how we envisage the Experience Quarter working.

“With cars, there is a lack of interest by the customer to go to a showroom. At the same time, the makers are faced with having a load of new products – electric cars. And if you’re trying to launch something new, at a time when customers aren’t going to your distribution channels, how do you talk to them directly? Where would the manufacturers go to talk to their customers?”

He goes on: “That’s the Experience Quarter, sat in 40 acres where you could go for a walk and look at the 4x4s through the Wilderness Quarter. But it might be anything from whatever the next hoverboard is, or electric Harleys or hydrogen garden machinery… We are very interested in it being a showcase where people come and hang out for fun – but it sows the seed, as with Apple.”

Planning consent has been received for the Innovation Quarter, with the aim to start works in 2024. The

Wilderness Quarter application will go in this summer – and the Experience Quarter’s outline planning permission came in earlier this year.

There have also been plans for a hotel for several years, but these are now on hold, as Dan explains: “We realised as we saw these other opportunities in innovation and experience that the hotel we would have built in, say, 2018 would have been very different from the hotel we’d build today. So we have said, let’s see how the rest of the site is going to look, and then we’ll know how the hotel should function.

“We’re very much looking forward to doing it, but it’ll be on the basis of a much more informed usage pattern – business and commercial and consumer. Because if the Experience Quarter is, say, half a million people a year, and it goes in that direction, then that’s a different hotel, too, and a site that is perhaps leading in a different direction.”

With all this going on, it’s now time for a second round of equity raising. The Innovation Quarter will cost around £40m and the hotel £30m-40m. The Experience Quarter will be £50m; including the Wilderness Quarter, Dan currently estimates investment of £200m. Is that do-able? He is confident it is.

“We’ve always been systematic and methodical. We might enthuse about all the businesses here and really enjoy it, but at the end of the day it’s got to be professionally run. The numbers have to add up, because that is how you make something survive and be sustainable.

“It’s something we’re very focused on, but with regards to the future development, they’re bigger buildings, there are economies of scale building, we own the land. Our model is slightly different to that of a normal developer, who’d buy the land and then layer on building costs and staff and consultants. At Bicester Motion we have a lot of that in house anyway.

“There are plenty of exciting things happening here – and the potential for a lot more.” www.bicestermotion.com

WHY ZERO IS A HERO Boss of top E-fuel specialist on powering the future

Words Nathan Chadwick

BICESTER HERITAGE

Is

HOME to many innovative companies, but one that’s currently at the razorsharp end of the political, ecological and cultural debate is Zero Petroleum.

Its aim is to provide sustainable synthetic fuel to the aviation, military, agricultural and automotive sectors, and it is among several businesses developing synthetic or E-fuels. Zero is different, however, says CEO Paddy Lowe: “We make fuel from air and water using renewable energy –it’s chemistry, not alchemy. When your car burns fuel, what comes out of the tailpipe is carbon dioxide (CO2) and water, the products of combusting hydrogen and carbon.

“We recirculate that CO2 and water from the environment, converting it into hydrocarbons with new energy. It’s a fully circular system, just like the biological carbon cycle.”

Zero E-fuels will be intended to simply drop into existing engines, rather than be mixed with other ingredients, and Bicester Heritage is at the centre of development. Building 148’s solar roof panels will provide the energy to split water via electrolysis, making green hydrogen. Carbon will be captured from the air, and synthesised to make the fuel.

“We’ve already shown the ability to make a fuel of the necessary quality, by flying an RAF ’plane with our sustainable fuels; we got a Guinness

World Record for that,” Paddy says. “The chemistry’s proven. At Bicester we’ll be working at the engineering scale, making sufficient fuel to gain certification and undertake further research to optimise the process.”

The next step is commercial-scale production, which is due to begin in 2025. “It’ll be more expensive than fossil fuels to start with – all new tech is – but we expect to see price parity within ten years,” claims Paddy.

But what about the naysayers of synthetic fuels, who say that electric propulsion is the only way forward?

“I’m a big fan of EVs, and I hope they will find a better solution than lithium cobalt for the batteries,” he says. “But there are certain sectors where you simply can’t use electricity – a battery aircraft is not a meaningful solution for carrying payload and going distances. Agriculture is another area; combine harvesters are already on the weight limit, and need to do long shifts without stopping to recharge.”

However, motor sport is an area close to Paddy’s heart – he’s notched up championship wins at Williams, McLaren and Mercedes-Benz – and this sector, alongside classic cars, is set to become a prime beneficiary of synthetic fuels, he believes.

“It’s an area where you need dense energy – Formula 1 with batteries simply wouldn’t provide a spectacle,” he says. “Motor sport and collector cars are things people are passionate about – and that’s where synthetic fuels will be a great solution.” www.zero.co

Heritage Skills Academy is the UK's leading Training Provider for Classic Vehicle, and Historic Vehicle Racing ApprenAceships.

We deliver Mechanical and Coachbuilding apprenAceships from Academies located locaAons at Bicester Heritage and Brooklands Museum.

If you are interested in an engineering career within a thriving sector, visit our workshop at Bicester Heritage opposite the Wrigley Monkey Brewery, and talk to our apprenAceship team about apprenAceships. Visit www.heritageskillsacademy.co.uk

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