Lotus gains government grant to grow workforce and improve model range.

British car manufacturer Lotus has secured a £10 million government grant which will see the firm create more than 300 new jobs.

The Regional Growth Fund (RGF) has awarded the automotive firm £10.44 million, which will be used for research and development of products, along with staff training. In addition Lotus is expected to create 313 new full time jobs to support production over the coming years.

Business Secretary, Vince Cable MP visited Lotus’ Norfolk headquarters today, 25 November 2013, where he toured the engineering and factory facilities and formally announced the grant to Lotus management.

The grant is a further boost for Lotus, following a £100 million investment by its owners DRB-HICOM which has allowed the company to enhance its engineering, productivity, efficiency and quality. Lotus is also recruiting for more than 130 new jobs, previously announced in July 2013.

The Regional Growth Fund (RGF) is a flexible and competitive £3.2 billion fund operating across England from 2011 to 2017. It supports projects that are using private sector investment to create economic growth and sustainable employment.

Aslam Farikullah, Chief Operating Officer at Lotus, said: “This grant is part of a wider strategy for Lotus created to ensure we thrive and grow.  We are responding to increased global demand for our cars and engineering consultancy services and this grant will help to position Lotus at the forefront of global automotive innovation.

“We have very exciting plans for our sports cars and it’s a very positive move for Lotus that we’re in a position to create new jobs and to significantly contribute to Britain’s automotive industry.

“The team here at Lotus have worked very hard to secure this grant and every employee is playing their part in the stability, growth and future success of our company.”

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “Lotus is an iconic British car maker, with some of the most innovative engineers in the business. The car industry is one of Britain's great success stories, employing over 130,000 people and helping to build a stronger economy by contributing £11 billion a year. The Government's industrial strategy is working and giving business the confidence to invest, creating more high skilled, long term jobs in the UK.

“I am pleased to announce today that our flagship economic plan to create jobs outside of London - the regional growth fund - is awarding Lotus a £10 million grant which will help them develop their next generation of cars and create over 300 new jobs in East Anglia.  The Government has already supported over 400 projects with £2.6 billion from the Regional Growth Fund, promoting growth in regions across England. The latest round is still open for another two weeks and I'd urge all businesses with a plan to support jobs in their local areas to apply"

Jaguar Land Rover and EPSCR announce £10M virtual engineering research programme

• Jaguar Land Rover will lead a five year research programme with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and four leading UK universities
• The research projects will give the UK the opportunity to take a global lead in virtual simulation technology

Five new academic research projects that will advance the UK’s role in developing virtual simulation technologies were unveiled today by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, The Rt.Hon Dr Vince Cable MP.

The unique £10m five year collaboration between Jaguar Land Rover and the country’s leading academics will develop the capability of the virtual simulation industry in the UK and will give manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover access to new, world-class simulation tools and processes. This is the first phase of a 20 year strategic project that could put the UK at the leading edge of virtual simulation globally.

The research will improve the quality and capabilities of simulation, using sights, sounds and even smells to make virtual simulation more realistic.

Giving engineers a more realistic perception of what a design might achieve, as well as giving them access to more powerful computers, will mean even more engineering can be virtual. This will help manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover deliver more complex new vehicle programmes more quickly. It will also help save costs in product development by reducing the reliance on physical prototypes and have environmental benefits by limiting the number of prototypes that need to be driven and tested in the real world.

Announcing the funding during a visit to WMG at the University of Warwick, Dr Cable said: “With world-class universities and cutting edge companies like Jaguar Land Rover, the UK is well placed to be at the forefront of driving innovation and developing new technology. This investment will support the Government’s industrial strategy by boosting the UK’s manufacturing capability and helping to keep us globally competitive.”

The projects form part of the ‘Programme for Simulation Innovation’ (PSI), a partnership between Jaguar Land Rover and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Loughborough University, University of Leeds, University of Cambridge and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG).

The PSI project is funded by Jaguar Land Rover (£4m), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (£4m) and the partner Universities (£2m) and is split into two phases that will run over the next five years. The five projects announced today form the first phase and will make up 80 per cent of the programme. The projects include:

• Analysis of the vehicle as a complex system (Loughborough, Leeds)
• Multi-physics and multi-functional simulation (Loughborough )
• Driving simulation (Leeds)
• High performance computing and simulation knowledge mining and abstraction (Cambridge)
• Visualisation and virtual experience (Warwick)

Bob Joyce, Jaguar Land Rover Engineering Director, said: “While we already utilise a wide range of sophisticated virtual engineering tools and processes to design, engineer and test our new vehicles, we are keen to enhance the future capability of virtual simulation and tailor them for automotive product development. We want to make advances in the simulated driver and passenger experience, including more realistic imagery, sounds and even smells.  These projects will help us analyse increasingly complex cars at whole vehicle, system and component levels, as well as enhancing the high performance computers that industry will use in the future to mine increasing amounts of more complex data.

“Jaguar Land Rover believes the UK needs to be globally competitive in industrial innovation. Collaboration between Jaguar Land Rover and academia to develop new automotive applications will give the UK an opportunity to take a lead in virtual simulation technology.”

EPSRC’s Chief Executive Professor David Delpy said: “This partnership shows how the research community can work hand in hand with industry to push boundaries in science and engineering. EPSRC’s role, as a sponsor of innovative research, has been to work with Jaguar Land Rover to define the longer term research needs of the industry, issue a call for proposals and facilitate robust peer review.”