A number of things amuse us about the Britishvolt story. The first is this insistence from all around that the administration and bankruptcy of the project is a disaster. Well, no, because it’s not, in fact, the bankruptcy of the project at all. No one has dropped a bomb, wiping out the physical infrastructure, actually destroying something. What has gone, what is in administration, is the specific legal wrapper - for that’s what a company is, a legal wrapper - for the project.

The idea still exists, the site does, whatever planning permissions have been gained are still there. The project, as and whatever it is, still exists. In fact, the administrators will be selling it off as fast as they can. Anyone who wants it will be able to buy it.

What is gone is that legal wrapper along with the management who didn’t make a success of it. So, it’s not in fact a disaster at all. Whatever value was there is there.

A second amusement is the varied insistences that this was going to be something cutting edge. Not so much really.

The company had been seeking to develop a version of cylindrical 21700 battery cells — an existing product in the market — with better performance and charging speed.

Well, yes, except:

Tesla gave an update on the progress of ramping up 4680 battery cell production.

Leave aside the technological details there and what is being said is that Britishvolt would produce, at some indeterminate time in the future, something well behind the technological curve of what is being trialled and piloted right now.

This is akin to getting that mass production line for the Bristol Brabazon really and properly expanded as the de Havilland Comet takes to the skies.

But by far our greatest amusement is the general insistence that really, government must invest!

The Observer view on the free market thinking that failed Britishvolt

That free market thinking apparently being to allow an idea to be tested, when it doesn’t work then doing nothing about it.

Not for this government, nor any of its predecessors since 2010, the careful planning and collaboration with industry that propels investment in Japan, South Korea, China, Germany and the US. Ministers prefer to keep their hands by their sides and wallets firmly closed, in case they might be accused of a return to 1970s corporatism.

Well, yes, seems sensible to us if we’re honest about it.

For there is no one, absolutely no one at all, in the business of cars, batteries, lithium or even transport who does not know about Britishvolt. The entirety of the global industry of any and all of them will have run their slide rules - conservative lot, accountants and engineers - over the value of the offer and idea. There were a few profferings of minor amounts of seedcorn but no one was willing to step up and commit to financing the idea properly. On the grounds that it’s not a good idea perhaps.

When the experts tell us something is a bad idea we really should listen to said experts, no? When no one will open their wallet for an idea or project much the same is true. Even, that if it can’t be privately financed - in the middle of a roaring mania for the sector under discussion, with global corporations committing billion upon billion to the general field - then perhaps it shouldn’t be financed at all?

Which does leave us with that headline as the lesson to be learned. Some - as with The Observer here - think that Britishvolt is simply just such a bad idea that government must fund it.

Which isn’t we submit, the way to run a railroad. And on the subject of railroads about HS2…….