Market developments
Brandauer & Co Ltd, one of Birmingham’s oldest manufacturers, has secured a grant of £199,500 to help it break into the fast-growing electric vehicle market. The funding comes from the West Midlands Supply Chain Transition Programme, an initiative that helps regional firms strengthen their supply chains and diversify into new, high-growth sectors. Automotive has long made up a large share of Brandauer’s customer base, but the company has recently been branching out. It has moved into aerospace and defence, including emerging drone technologies, and has already won new orders in these areas. The new project is intended to build on that diversification by opening up opportunities in electric vehicles. Andy Davis, project lead for the programme, described Brandauer as an ideal candidate: an established manufacturer with genuine expertise that wants to pursue higher-value, higher-volume work rather than stand still. He noted that its shift into aerospace and defence shows how a mature SME can apply existing strengths to new products and supply chains. The project will be delivered with WMG, extending a partnership with Brandauer that has run for 15 years. WMG’s Dr Federico Melotti said the work would further strengthen the company’s position in advanced manufacturing.
Uber has started trialling self-driving cars in Manchester as part of its plan to bring robotaxis to cities across the UK. The vehicles use technology from partner firms Pony and Verne, which recently helped Uber launch Europe’s first autonomous taxi service in Zagreb. The cars are mapping streets with a safety driver at the wheel, no passengers, and no application to run passenger services in Manchester has been made. In London, limited passenger services began last month using Wayve vehicles, with a safety driver. What happens next is uncertain. Uber drivers, unions and London politicians oppose the rollout, with the GMB and ADCU unions warning that thousands of jobs will be lost. A London assembly committee report questioned the claimed benefits of robotaxis, raising concerns about congestion, public transport, safeguarding and disabled access. Transport for Greater Manchester said it wants the city’s taxis to be the safest in the country.
Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, has announced it is paying ¥115bn ($727m) for a 50% stake in Mitsubishi Electric’s automotive-components unit. The two companies aim to grow the business to more than ¥1tn in annual sales. Under the partnership, announced at a news conference in Tokyo on Monday, Mitsubishi will contribute its technology in electric powertrains, autonomous driving and in-car intelligence to EV platforms developed by Foxconn. The deal deepens Foxconn’s presence in the car industry as it extends its contract-manufacturing model into electric vehicles. Mitsubishi Electric gains a partner to help scale its car-parts operations. The companies plan to pair Mitsubishi’s long-standing relationships with automakers with Foxconn’s faster development approach, expanding beyond traditional components into EV and self-driving platforms. Foxconn’s chief strategy officer for EVs said the company was drawn chiefly to Mitsubishi’s electronic-control technology and the extensive software resources behind it. The deal values the business at ¥320bn on an enterprise-value basis. In the year to March, the unit generated ¥876bn in revenue and ¥54bn in operating profit. Mitsubishi Electric expects to book an impairment charge of c.¥100bn this fiscal year and will update its earnings forecast on the 30th of October. The transaction is expected to close in October 2027. The unit will then become an equal JV and will no longer be consolidated by Mitsubishi Electric.
Infrastructure & policy
Ayvens, a leasing company, has struck a deal with Fellten, a battery storage and EV charging technology firm, to make mobile EV charging available to its fleet customers. Fellten’s product, the Charge Qube, is a portable battery energy storage unit with high-power charging built in. The service is aimed at fleets whose charging needs are complex or keep changing. This includes organisations carrying out critical work in remote or temporary locations, where installing permanent chargers may not be realistic. Because the system combines stored battery power with rapid DC charging in a single containerised unit, it can be delivered and running within a few hours. Fleets can then charge vehicles without waiting for a permanent grid connection or expensive power upgrades. The units also reuse second-life batteries, giving healthy EV batteries a longer working life and supporting wider sustainability goals. Ayvens stressed that there is no single route to electrification. It said the company is always looking for new solutions that help customers make their fleets more sustainable, especially where their needs are harder to meet. It described the partnership as giving customers more options, so their electrification plans don’t stall. Fellten added that the agreement brings this flexibility to customers with some of the toughest charging requirements.
Deals
Holyvolt, an AI battery materials discovery company headquartered in Stockholm, has raised $45m to expand its AI models, laboratory capacity and scientific team. The round was backed by Zone II, CC.VC and angel investors from the finance sector, with Fifth Wall among existing investors. The company’s Discovery Engine is built on a high-throughput testing platform from Wildcat Discovery Technologies, which Holyvolt acquired and merged with in 2026. Over 18 years, that platform has completed more than 225 projects for over 85 customers, including BMW, generating more than 100 patents. It has also produced data from over 500,000 physical cells tested across 165 million cycles. Holyvolt’s AI models use this data to predict which materials to test. Automated labs then build and cycle real cells, and the results feed back into the models. The company claims this makes it 100 times faster than conventional R&D. The first material heading to market is DRX, a disordered rock salt cathode that delivers high energy density without nickel or cobalt and can be sourced outside China. Commercialisation begins in 2027 with defence applications. The timing coincides with a Pentagon ban on batteries from major Chinese manufacturers starting in October 2027. DRX is being developed at Holyvolt’s San Diego facility.
HyLight, a French startup based in Bretigny-sur-Orge, has raised €13m to grow its business building hydrogen-powered airships for industrial inspection. The latest round brings the company’s total funding to roughly $18.6m, with backing from Rubio Impact Ventures, DRW, Teampact Ventures, Y Combinator and Ring Capital. The company designs, builds and runs autonomous airships that combine drone and airship technology. They are used to inspect long stretches of critical infrastructure such as power lines, gas pipelines and railways, and they produce no emissions. HyLight’s systems have already gathered high-resolution diagnostic data across hundreds of miles of industrial networks, at lower cost than conventional helicopter patrols. HyLight plans to use the new money to scale up fleet production, expand its inspection services across Europe and North America, and further automate how it processes infrastructure data. The company is led by CEO Martin Bocken, CTO Josef Rokusek and CBO Thomas Laporte.
Mana Battery, a startup based in Broomfield, Colorado, has secured $10.15m in new funding to advance its sodium-ion battery technology. Voyager Ventures led the round, joined by Union Square Ventures and Buff Gold Ventures. The company is headed by co-founder, president and CEO Tyler Evans and chief technology officer Nicholas Singstock, both of whom hold doctorates. Its sodium-based cells are designed to offer a cheaper, more sustainable option to conventional lithium-ion storage, while reducing dependence on constrained supply chains. Mana Battery plans to put the new capital towards several key priorities: deepening its fundamental chemistry research, enlarging its hardware prototyping labs, increasing manufacturing capacity for its cells, and running commercial pilot projects in energy storage markets. Having completed its early technical validation work, the company is now moving beyond small-scale laboratory chemistry. Its engineers are shifting focus to automated pilot production lines, a crucial step towards larger-scale commercial output.
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