Market developments
Chancellor John Healey’s Autumn Budget focused on easing cost-of-living pressure caused by the Middle East conflict. The 5p cut in fuel duty will be extended to July 2027, at an estimated cost of £1.35bn by 2028. EV groups argue that money would be better spent on electrification. They warn that keeping petrol and diesel cheap discourages drivers from switching. The 0% VAT rate on household electricity has also been extended, thus charging at home stays cheap. Drivers with driveways pay no VAT to charge, while those who rely on public chargers pay 20%. That hits people in flats and terraced housing hardest. To address this, the government has committed £100m over 2 years to cut the cost of lower-powered local public charging. It says eligible drivers will save around £150 a year. A new review will also look at public charging costs, including whether drivers could pay home-equivalent tariffs. Separately, a £170m Depot Charging Scheme has opened for applications. It covers up to 75% of fleet charger installation costs until 2030.
First Bus has announced it has put £3.5m into Lakeside Coaches and its sister company A.T. Brown Coaches in the 2 years since buying the Shropshire business in October 2024. Most of the money, around £3 million, has paid for 14 new buses and coaches. The remaining £500,000 funded a new 4-bay workshop and engineering office at Lakeside’s base in Ellesmere. In its first year as owner, First Bus kept to the investment plans Lakeside had already made before the sale. This included finishing the new engineering facility and bringing in seven new vehicles from MAN, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, worth about £1.4 million. Lakeside’s management said it mattered that these commitments could go ahead, and that First Bus backed them from the start. Lakeside mainly runs school transport and private hire work and earned c.£12.5m in revenue in the year before the takeover. The deal is part of First Bus’s wider plan to grow its UK coach operations. The approach pairs established local operators with the backing of a national transport group.
Entries are now open for the 7th London to Brighton Electric Vehicle Rally, which takes place on Saturday 26th of June 2027. Around 100 EVs will set off from Westminster, passing Big Ben, before driving 60 miles through the Surrey and Sussex countryside to the finish on Brighton’s Madeira Drive. The event is not a race but an energy efficiency trial. In each category, the vehicle that uses the least energy wins a trophy. For the first time, entry is free. Each place includes breakfast at the Westminster start, official rally stickers and access to the EVillage at the finish. The day ends with an awards party at Brighton Marina, with a welcome drink. Seafront lunch and dinner are available as optional extras. Only 100 places are available, and last year’s event sold out, so organisers are urging people to apply quickly. The EVillage is free and open to everyone, including people who don’t own an EV. Visitors can test drive cars ranging from city models to family SUVs along the seafront and try e-bikes on a track on the promenade.
Infrastructure & Policy
Workhorse Group, the US electric truck maker, has agreed a $10m deal with RHAELM, a London-based AI infrastructure developer. Under the agreement, Workhorse will build a full-scale manufacturing specification unit of its TerraPod modular data centre platform at its plant in Union City, Indiana. The companies announced the deal on 29 October 2026. The spec unit will act as a physical reference model. It will be used to test how equipment fits, how technicians can access it for servicing, and the order in which units should be assembled. The two firms also signed a non-binding letter of intent to work towards a formal supply agreement, which they aim to finalise by 31 December. That agreement is expected to include an initial order of 150 TerraPod systems. The order depends on RHAELM accepting the platform, final paperwork and internal approvals. The deal would also cover more joint engineering work and milestone-based prepayments. Workhorse would get a right of first refusal on RHAELM’s future modular data centre units in the US. RHAELM is the first partner under the developer-led model Workhorse set out in July, when it announced plans to enter the mobile AI data centre market. Workhorse expects TerraPod production to begin in late 2027 or early 2028. Chief executive Scott Griffith compared the industry’s current stage to the arrival of the Model T.
Deals
NoorNation, an Egyptian climate tech startup, has raised $1.05m in seed funding. Backers include Egyptian agricultural group Linah Farms, Catalyst Fund and Saudi Arabia’s KBW Ventures, which also invested in 2024. The money will fund a pay-per-use service that lets farmers rent solar-powered water pumping by the hour instead of buying the equipment. Its main product, LifeBox, combines solar power with irrigation, pumping and desalination for off-grid farms and communities. NoorNation has finished about 66 projects in 13 Egyptian governorates, totalling c.7 megawatts of capacity and covering more than 5,200 feddans of farmland. Linah Farms invested after using NoorNation’s systems, which it says have saved it more than EGP 5 million in diesel and electricity costs. The 2 companies have also agreed on 5 more installations, adding c.1.13 megawatts. The service targets a big barrier to switching away from diesel. Around 95% of farmers in Egypt’s older agricultural areas still use diesel pumps, and a solar system can cost about EGP 1 million.
Viridian Ingni Propulsion, a deeptech startup based in Chennai, India, has raised c.$175,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures. Thus, reflecting growing investor interest in homegrown Indian EV components and technology-led manufacturing. Viridian Ingni develops complete electric propulsion systems, combining the motor, the controller and the firmware that manages their performance. The systems are designed for a wide range of uses, including electric two-wheelers, e-rickshaws, drones, robots and industrial machinery. The company plans to use the funds to move from prototype validation into production. Spending will go towards manufacturing tooling, setting up pilot production, obtaining certifications and hiring staff.
Bedrock Robotics, a San Francisco start-up that turns heavy construction equipment into self-operating machines, has raised $600m in a Series C round. CapitalG and Emergence Capital co-led the round. It takes Bedrock’s total funding to nearly $1bn and values the company at $4.1bn post-money. The company plans to use the money to expand beyond excavators into mixed fleets of heavy machinery. Bedrock says it has more than doubled its customer base since 2025 and that its machines are already doing paid work on live sites. Their customers include Sundt Construction, Zachry Construction and Haydon of Arizona, which will deploy the technology on building, civil and data centre projects. Several regional contractors across the US have also signed up. The deal reflects growing investor appetite for physical AI in construction. Most construction technology firms raise less than $50m, but robotics companies such as Gravis Robotics, FieldAI and Icon have recently secured far larger sums. Investors point to better AI models, more computing power and rising demand from onshoring and data centre construction as the main drivers.
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