Funding Competition: APC – Advanced Route to Market Demonstrator 2 (United Kingdom)

Deadline: 28-Jun-23

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £10 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 and zero emission transport solutions, and automotive technologies. It aims to support the UK’s transition towards net zero product manufacturing and supply chain in the UK automotive sector.

The primary application for technologies developed through this competition should be for the automotive sector but cross sector application is valuable.

Vehicle applications in scope can include on and off road, agriculture, heavy duty, mining and zero emission urban goods delivery vehicles, including 2 wheelers.

Focus Areas

• Your project must demonstrate the advancement of on-vehicle technologies in one or more of the following areas:
  • energy storage, batteries and their components, management and integration systems
  • fuel cell and associated balance of plant
  • electric machines
  • power electronics
  • fossil fuel free internal combustion, at the point of use, and 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
  • digitalisation for either vehicle system or subsystem development, design, test and validation
  • lightweight materials and manufacturing for vehicle and powertrain structures

Specific Themes

• You must consider which technology or technologies best represent your project and rank them in order of their significance and impact to your project. The one ranked first must be the lead technology.
• The technologies are:
  • 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 vehicle system or sub-system development, design, test and validation integration
  • Your lead technology must be 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 £500,000 and £1.5 million. Your project must be a minimum of 50% match funded.
• Your project must:
  • have a grant funding request between £500,000 and £1.5 million
  • be a minimum of 50% match-funded
  • start by 1 October 2023
  • last between 9 and 12 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • have an active registered business base in the UK
    • be a grant recipient
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations, where applicable

• 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)
  • 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
    • provide evidence of an intention to expand their R&D activity in the UK during and after the project
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into IFS.
  • To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
• 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.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
• Number of applications
  • There are no limits on the number of applications an organisation can be involved in. If you are successful in more than one application, you will be asked to confirm you have the capacity to run multiple projects simultaneously.

Ineligibility Criteria

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • focussed on process or manufacturing
  • focussed on recycling
  • focussed only on the development of clean fuels
  • predominantly off vehicle
  • not aligned with the UK’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution
  • requesting more than 50% grant for total project costs
• 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.