Test and pace: ensuring the next generation of cars reach the road

It's the Q Branch of the motoring industry, a top secret complex used by most major motor manufacturers from around the world to test their next generation of cars before they enter production.

Throughout the Covid Pandemic the Millbrook Proving Ground has continued to test and analyse emerging automotive technologies which will only become public in the years to come.

It's been doing this, out of the public gaze, for fifty years now.

One of the newest facilities at Millbrook. A multi million pound centre testing batteries for electric cars. It's been operating at full capacity for the last three months, operated remotely by staff working from home.

Staff who need to come and work in the laboratories and workshops are able to work at distance from each other and from visiting clients.

Millbrook covers nearly 700 acres but apart from the main entrance it's almost impossible to see because it's screened by around 300 thousand trees. That's because much of its work is very commercially sensitive.

As manufacturing returns it's likely to be the quest for more environmentally friendly vehicles which drives the workv the site is asked to undertake.

Watch Matthew Hudson's report below