British oil & gas giant, BP recently announced its latest step to continue their venture into the electric vehicles sector by investing up to £50 million (around $60 million) in a class apart electric vehicle (EV) battery testing centre in the UK. The investment also covers the development of an analytical laboratory to boost efficiency. A while back, BP had announced to invest up to £18 billion in the UK’s energy system by the end of this decade in line with their zero-emission goal.

The facility is all set to be launched by the end of 2024 and will be located at the Pangbourne campus of BP. The centre is aimed to assist the pre-existing technologies and engineering aspects of the campus as it already undertakes research and development of fuels, lubricants and EV fluids. The investment will make the facility capable of developing technologies in hybrid and all-electric vehicles further.

Additionally, the advanced e-fluid technologies at this facility coupled with state-of-the-art engineering capacity can be utilised to assist other industries such as thermal management fluids for data centres which are witnessing an exponential rise.

Following the announcement, BP’s UK head of the country, Louise Kingham said, “We’re backing Britain. We’re fully committed to the UK’s energy transition. This additional investment will help accelerate the transition to EVs by developing solutions to help decarbonise the transport sector.”

This ambitious plan may be seen to be spanning its domains to other BP fuel and lubricants technology facilities in the US, Germany, South Africa and China in the coming years as per the industry experts and economists looking at the net zero deadlines set in these regions.