A NORTH-EAST consortium, including Nissan, in Sunderland, and Smith Electric Vehicles, part of the North-East based Tanfield Group, will today receive Government funding to put a fleet of electric or low carbon vehicles on Britain’s roads in the next year.

The consortium, also including LTI and Ford, AVID Vehicles, Liberty Electric Cars, Newcastle University and One North East, is one of eight ultra low carbon vehicle projects across the UK that will receive funding from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB).

The project is a winner of the TSB’s Ultra Low Carbon Vehicles Demonstrator Competition, which aims to accelerate the introduction of electric or low emission vehicles onto UK roads.

The competition, in which up to £10m will be allocated to fund research projects, aimed to find groups capable of supplying significant numbers of vehicles for the development of a UK-wide fleet of at least 100 passenger vehicles, with a maximum of seven seats each, for delivery late this year or early next year.

The vehicles would then be used in a real-world environment for at least 12 months.

Each vehicle should be capable of achieving tailpipe emissions of less than 50g CO2/km and a zero-emission range of more than 35km.

The announcement comes days after Nick Brown, Minister for the North-East, underlined the importance of the electric vehicle industry to the region.

Mr Brown highlighted Washington-based Smith Electric Vehicles and Nissan as examples of where the region was already poised to benefit from the new market.

He said: “I do feel the North-East could become a world leader in the electric vehicle market. We should embrace it.”