Virgin billionaire suggests hybrids to save MG Rover

Wikinews
April 18, 2005

Sir Richard Branson, successful British entrepreneur, better known as the founder of the Virgin brand, has made a suggestion to the next British chancellor to both save MG Rover, the largest independent manufacturer of cars in England until it collapsed this spring, and help with rapidly rising oil demand. He wants the British government to give subsidies to the fallen car-maker so that it can be the first European producer of hybrid cars.

Branson writes in The Independent:

Gordon Brown—or Oliver Letwin, if the Conservatives win—should champion a pan-European rival to the dominance of Japan and America in the hybrid car sector, based at Longbridge [Site of the Rover plant]. After all, similar intervention has already seen the European Airbus outsell its US rival Boeing—while Virgin, other airlines and our passengers all benefit from intense competition between the plane-makers.

The EU was prepared to grant billions of pounds of soft loans to Airbus to develop the A380...I want to see the Government engineer the same sort of deal for Rover as a flagship hybrid car-maker.

As an entrepreneur, I do not believe in governments rescuing lame ducks. I was against the renationalisation of Railtrack, for instance, no matter how unpopular it was as a private company. But as a nation - and as a continent - we cannot afford to throw away an asset like the Longbridge plant and its workforce.

We can also not afford to ignore the fact that we are literally running out of gas; we need to reduce consumption. Fuel savings from the sale of hundreds of thousands of Rover hybrids would help to reduce Britain’s overseas payments for oil (effectively paying for any subsidies).