The UK is currently Europe’s 3rd largest vehicle producer. The automotive sector accounts for 10% of the UK’s trade in goods and had a turnover of £60.5 billion last year. Yet global production networks for vehicles are subject to unprecedented changes to their geography of production, distribution and consumption.

This project examines the energy, environmental and trade implications of the emerging global production networks for vehicles and batteries.

In collaboration with the Industrial Decarbonisation research activity and a Leeds PhD studentship, the project is using detailed Multi Region Input Output models to track supply chain implications, state of the art life-cycle techniques to examine environmental consequences and macroeconomic modelling to examine potential impacts on the wider economy.