APC24: Industrialising Net-zero Automotive Technology (UK)

Deadline: 20-Sep-23

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £20 million for late stage R&D projects that help accelerate the UK towards a net zero automotive future.

The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) provides funding, support, insight and foresight for the development of low emission transport solutions, and automotive technologies.

The aim of this competition is to seek proposals for collaborative R&D projects that design, develop and manufacture technology that will work towards delivering net zero carbon emission on-vehicle technologies for on-road or off-road, including 2 wheelers.

Specific Themes

• You must consider which of the technologies listed below best represent your project. If you are using multiple technologies, rank them in order of their significance and impact to your project. The one ranked first must be the lead technology:
  • electric machines and power electronics
  • energy storage and energy management
  • lightweight vehicles and powertrain structures
  • fuel cell and associated balance of plant
  • thermal propulsion systems and alternative fuels
  • digitalisation for development of low carbon vehicle innovation, data analytics, redesign, test and validation and verification
• Your lead technology must have a significance and impact ranking of at least 50%. You can also rank up to an additional two supporting technologies that can have a maximum of 25% each.
• Your percentages must add up to 100%.

Funding Information

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £2.5 million and £20 million. Your project must be a minimum of 50% match-funded, with a suggested maximum number of six partners.

Eligible Projects

• Your project must:
  • contribute to the UK’s strategic aims and direction of travel towards net zero transport vision, such as the Automotive Council’s Roadmaps
  • deliver on-vehicle technologies and or associated manufacturing processes which support the transition to net zero
  • support growth, transition and security of the UK’s automotive supply chain, increasing capability, whilst improving productivity, efficiency and competitiveness
  • support a digitally enabled, or integrated, UK R&D scale up and commercialisation, to decarbonise technology design, development, optimisation and production for sub-systems, vehicle-system or transport ecosystem, to deliver innovation value-add
• Your project must advance technologies in one or more of the following areas:
  • energy storage, batteries, their components, management and integration systems
  • fuel cell and associated balance of plant
  • electric machines
  • power electronics
  • fossil fuel free (at the point of use) internal combustion (in the case of on-road solutions, they will support project proposals which aim to achieve zero harmful tailpipe emissions)
  • hydrogen storage and management systems
  • design for circular economy, including the disassembly, recovery, and reuse of materials used in the project technologies.
  • digitalisation for vehicle development and design
• The economic benefit of your project will be assessed on criteria including but not limited to:
  • scale and impact on the UK economy
  • foreign investment anchored in the UK
  • jobs created or safeguarded
  • upskilling or reskilling of workforce
  • automotive supply chain in the UK (upstream, mid-stream and downstream)
  • lifetime environmental impact of the vehicle and circular economy models
  • Your proposal must evidence:
    • a clear route to market exploitation, that can be evidenced, including IP generated for the UK
    • a credible consortium-led approach to the project, agreed in principle and able to proceed to a formal collaborative agreement
    • what would happen should the project not be funded
• Projects will be encouraged to disseminate their results to bring benefit to the wider UK automotive industry.

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • be or involve at least one UK registered micro or medium sized enterprise
    • have an active registered business base in the UK
    • be a grant recipient
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
    • You must involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).
  • Non UK registered businesses and research organisations are only eligible to apply for funding if:
    • they set up an active UK-registered business where the funded project work will be carried out
    • they provide evidence of an intention to expand their R&D activity in the UK during and after the project
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
• Number of applications
  • There is no limit on the number of applications an organisation can be involved in.

Ineligibility Criteria

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • focussed only on the development of clean fuels
  • not aligned with the UK’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution
  • requesting more than 50% grant for total project costs
  • developing either e-Scooters or e-Bikes
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

For more information, visit Innovate UK.