The UK Power Electronics Bet Is Paying Out in Plants

The Advanced Propulsion Centre’s February 2023 power electronics map said the UK needed 2.3 million inverters a year for cars and vans built here. It also said no complete domestic chain existed to make them.

UK plants were already stopping lines because chips from Taiwan and Singapore were late. The document’s wager was that mapping every step, and funding two silicon carbide inverter projects, would pull the missing factories onshore.

The Map That Laid Out a Missing Factory Floor

The Advanced Propulsion Centre did not announce a new fab. It published a first-of-its-kind value chain that walks a traction inverter from wafer to packaged module to the box that sits between the battery and the motor. An insight report sat beside it, aimed at industry, investors and government.

Bhavik Shah, then technology trends consultant at APC, put the clock on the record. Electric-only cars go on sale after 2030. The chips have to be here before that date, not after it.

Semiconductors are a vital part of power electronics, and power electronics are fundamental to electric vehicles, particularly high-power inverters. If we are to meet manufacturing targets of electric-only vehicles on sale post-2030, we need to act now to onshore our supply chain.

Bhavik Shah, Technology Trends Consultant, Advanced Propulsion Centre

He pointed at silicon carbide and gallium nitride as the materials with a fighting chance of being made in Britain. Silicon carbide was the front-runner for high-power inverters, because it wastes less energy as heat and lets motors, cables and battery packs shrink. APC’s own note put those conversion gains in a 5-15% band once the higher switching frequencies and 800 V architectures are in the car.

Shah recorded a short explainer when the map went out, walking the chain from wafers and die through modules into inverters, converters and onboard chargers.

2.3 Million Inverters and Almost None of the Wafers

The load-bearing number in the launch note was 2.3 million inverters a year for UK-made passenger cars and vans. Electric vehicles, APC said, use 30% more chips than a combustion car, so a shortage hits 2030 build plans first.

The insight report went further upstream. To support locally produced electric vehicles, the UK would need 80,000 silicon carbide wafers by 2030. Europe as a whole would need 600,000 to 800,000. Those discs start at six to eight inches across. Die are cut from them, then packed into discrete devices or power modules, then assembled into inverters rated from 30 kW to 400 kW.

APC’s score of UK strength was blunt. The country already looked decent at inverter systems and could scale that step. It was thin on modules and die. On the wafer itself it had nothing in volume, and brought the discs in.

APC’S 2023 VALUE STACK VERSUS THE 2026 PLANT LIST

The same study, credited to Exawatt, found that in a high-volume silicon carbide inverter the module ate 83% of manufacturing cost. That is why a map that stops at “we design inverters” leaves most of the bill overseas.

APC already had two collaborative projects on the books as working examples. ESCAPE, led by McLaren Applied, was valued at £19.5 million, with £9.7 million from APC, and set out to align a UK silicon carbide chain from materials to parts. Future BEV, led by BMW, was valued at £30 million, with £15 million from APC, and aimed at a standardised 800 V silicon carbide inverter and a matching UK battery chain.

What ESCAPE Unlocked for UK Silicon Carbide

ESCAPE had launched in 2019 with 12 partners, among them Clas-SiC Wafer Fab, the Compound Semiconductor Centre, Microchip Technology, the University of Warwick and the Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult. McLaren Applied held the lead. The job was written as end-to-end: epi, fab, modules, converters, inverters.

The project closed in 2024. A year later the Catapult’s case study did not claim a finished sovereign chain. It claimed leverage. Partners estimate the work will feed hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles and chargers over five to ten years. The clearer paper trail is the money that moved after the consortium spent time in the same rooms.

WHERE ESCAPE’S MONEY TRAIL RAN

• Newport sale: The Catapult says the project had ESCAPE’s role in the Newport sale, pointing to Vishay’s $177 million purchase of the former Nexperia plant.
• Caldicot packaging: It also ties the work to Microchip’s decision to make Caldicot its advanced packaging centre for power modules, with a $3 million investment.
• Clas-SiC private round: Clas-SiC Wafer Fab secured £10 million in private investment after the project finished.
• Follow-on at the Catapult: CSA Catapult booked £647,000 of extra collaborative R&D income and said 12 small firms used kit and methods built during ESCAPE.

McLaren Applied kept moving after the APC-funded work. In June 2025 the company marked the SCIENZE project complete, a separate Innovate UK effort on power electronics manufacturing around the IPG5 silicon carbide inverter. The design house did not wait for a British wafer to exist in volume. It shipped product.

Vishay Turns the Newport Plant Toward SiC

Newport Wafer Fab has been the UK’s largest semiconductor plant for decades, and the most argued-over. Vishay Intertechnology, a US group, completed the buy in 2024. On 27 March 2025 the Chancellor stood at the site to welcome a further £250 million silicon carbide plan.

The government note says the money will put advanced silicon carbide devices, the sort used in electric drivetrains, into that factory. It expects the work to support over 500 skilled jobs, with more in the supply chain. The Automotive Transformation Fund, run with APC, is in the mix. The same statement says ATF and APC programmes have already pulled through over £6 billion of private investment, and that the Autumn Budget put over £2 billion of capital and R&D over five years into zero-emission vehicle manufacturing and its suppliers.

This is an exciting moment, and the start of our plans for growth in the UK. We can see through the development of the Industrial Strategy and the skilled workforce in Newport that there is a real opportunity to play to the UK’s strength in advanced semiconductors, delivering greater economic security and supporting Net Zero.

Roy Shoshani, COO Semiconductors and CTO, Vishay Intertechnology, GOV.UK briefing, 27 March 2025

That is the wafer step the 2023 map marked as empty, now sitting under a US parent with UK public co-funding. The public row around the plant was about who would own it, not about APC’s PDF. Once the sale cleared, the capital followed the site and the workforce that had been there since 1982.

The dedicated UK silicon carbide foundry is still the smaller one. Clas-SiC Wafer Fab, founded in 2017 in Lochgelly, Fife, runs a 150 mm open foundry and sells process kits rather than competing with its device customers. In August 2026 it took a £1.9 million Scottish Enterprise capital grant as part of a £12 million investment to upgrade tools, on top of the £10 million private round booked after ESCAPE. Jen Walls, Clas-SiC’s director and chief executive, said the extra kit would speed the next generation of its technology. It remains a mid-volume house, which is the market Steve Lambert had named in 2023.

Bolton’s New Lines Are Timed for April 2027

Assembly is moving too, and again the owner is not a UK independent. On 16 July 2025, Astemo UK said it would put a new inverter line at Bolton in Greater Manchester, with production due in April 2027. The programme is worth more than £100 million. The company estimated 220 jobs created or secured. ATF backing is attached. Toru Kamioke, a senior executive vice president at Astemo, said Bolton would be the group’s fourth country for electrification products, after Japan, the United States and China.

By July 2026 the first line was installed and commissioned, and Lee Owens, Astemo UK’s managing director, said start of production for the contracted carmaker was still April 2027. Two lines are going in. The inverters are being built in Britain so they can meet European green-procurement rules and cut the emissions that come from shipping finished boxes from another region. The dies inside those boxes are a separate question, and Astemo did not claim a UK wafer source.

APC also funded a later module project, SCION, valued at £7.4 million with £3.7 million of public money, aimed at a UK-designed silicon carbide power module and medium-volume production by 2028. The map from 2023 has become a stack of plants with dates, owners and grant codes. It has not become a single British-owned chain from crystal to car.

UK Factories Built 298,813 Electrified Cars in 2025

The demand side of the 2023 wager moved the other way. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said UK factories turned out 764,715 vehicles in 2025, of which 717,371 were cars and 47,344 were commercial vehicles. That was down 15.5% on the year before. Car output fell 8.0%.

2025 UK BUILD, AGAINST THE 2023 INVERTER MAP

• Electrified cars: Production of battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid cars rose 8.3% to 298,813, a 41.7% share of car output.
• Export share: 555,826 cars went overseas, 77.5% of car output.
• Home market: 161,545 cars were built for UK buyers, down 8.2%.
• The mapped inverter figure: APC’s 2.3 million a year was a predicted need for UK-made cars and vans, not a 2025 factory count.

Those 298,813 electrified cars are not the same quantity as 2.3 million inverters. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids sit inside the SMMT electrified tally, and a dual-motor car can take more than one inverter. Even on a generous reading, UK plants in 2025 did not come close to the volume the map used to justify a full domestic chain. Mike Hawes, SMMT’s chief executive, called 2025 the toughest year in a generation for UK vehicle manufacturing, pointing at plant changes, trade barriers and a cyber attack that stopped Jaguar Land Rover.

So the industrial bet is being scored against a smaller car industry than the one the 2023 paper assumed would need feeding. A mid-volume silicon carbide house in Fife, a converted Newport line and a Bolton inverter hall can cover a lot of that smaller build. They do not, on their own, look like a 2.3 million inverter machine.

McLaren Applied Still Buys the Costly Module

Steve Lambert, then head of electrification at McLaren Applied, was consulted on the 2023 map. He did not promise a British Wolfspeed. He named the lane he thought the UK could win.

The UK is great at the power electronics design level and there is a fantastic opportunity for local manufacturing. The market is healthy and there is demand so we now need to build the capability to do this here by investing in skills and training.

Steve Lambert, Head of Electrification, McLaren Applied

He wanted high-quality, high-performance parts in the mid-volume band, for niche applications, with exports attached. McLaren Applied’s IPG5 is that product: an 800 V silicon carbide traction inverter, about 5.5 kg, with peak efficiency over 99%. ST, which supplies the module inside it, puts that power module at 60% of the bill of materials. The British design still depends on a part made in ST’s silicon carbide network, not on a Lochgelly or Newport die in volume.

That is the honest score of the 2023 wager. The map did its job as a shopping list. ESCAPE helped set up a sale and a packaging centre. Vishay is putting £250 million into the empty wafer step. Clas-SiC is still the dedicated foundry. Astemo will start a British inverter hall in April 2027. UK car plants, meanwhile, built 298,813 electrified cars in 2025, and the costly module in the best-known UK inverter still arrives from someone else’s fab.