West Midlands mayor Andy Street is backing a plan to close Coventry airport and turn the site into one of the world’s largest “gigafactories”.
At full production, the 60-gigawatt-hours facility would produce enough batteries to power 600,000 zero-emission cars a year.
However, the £2.5bn scheme has no planning permission, no suitable power grid connection and no customers, as none of the world’s battery producers have signed up as a prospective tenant.
Coventry airport has become an aviation backwater, having lost out to Birmingham International, one of the country’s largest passenger hubs, and East Midlands, Britain’s second largest cargo airport.
