Deadline: 11-May-23
UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £11 million to validate readiness for scale up of manufacturing processes in the automotive supply chain of net zero technologies.
The Automotive Transformation Fund is delivered by the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) and partners, Innovate UK and the Department for Business and Trade. The Department for Business and Trade has taken responsibility for some of the functions of the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Department for International Trade (DIT). It supports the industrialisation at scale of a high-value electrified automotive supply chain in the UK.
The aim of this competition is to support businesses to validate through pilot manufacturing and process development, their commercial viability and readiness to rapidly scale within the automotive sector.
They are seeking proposals from single organisations or consortiums with R&D projects validating readiness for scale up of manufacturing processes, through pilot production. This competition will have a maximum grant request of £2 million.
These projects must produce physical production samples, of a quantity and quality which supports the case for the commercial viability of scale up in the UK. It may include samples to validate technical qualification.
The resulting projects must support the UK automotive industry in:
- increasing business confidence in making large scale manufacturing investments
- building electrified vehicle supply chains
Specific Themes
- Your project must prioritise the scale up in areas mentioned in the Automotive Transformation Fund for an electrified supply chain. Your project must prioritise scale up and can focus on but not be limited to:
- Batteries, including cells and gigafactories
- cathode materials and manufacturing
- anode materials and manufacturing
- electrolyte
- cell assembly components, including separators
- module to pack
- cell to pack
- Electric motors and drives
- magnet materials and manufacturing
- electrical steel materials and manufacturing
- electrical machine assembly
- drive line components
- assembly and test into complete drive unit
- Power electronics
- wide band gap semi-conductors
- sensors
- passives
- power electronics assembly
- Fuel cells
- membrane electrode assembly
- fuel cell stack assembly
- storage tanks
- Recycling
- batteries
- electric motors and drives,
- power electronics and fuel cells (where there is a move towards circular economy, particularly for critical materials)
- Batteries, including cells and gigafactories
- Sectors in scope can include the supply chain for on and off-road vehicles, agriculture, heavy duty and mining.
Funding Information
- Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £750,000 and £2 million.
- Your project must:
- have a total grant funding request between £750,000 and £2 million
- start by 1 November 2023
- end by 31 March 2025
- have a minimum duration of 9 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
- request grant funding
- carry out its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
- To lead a project your organisation must:
- 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)
- To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
- Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service 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 the Innovation Funding Service.
- To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
Ineligible
- They are not funding projects which are:
- not aligned with the aims of the Automotive Transformation Fund
- not of sustained benefit to the automotive sector primarily
- centred on technologies or processes which are too early stage to scale at pace
- focused primarily on fossil-fuelled internal combustion technology
- focused primarily on the use of digital or data technologies
- centred on low carbon fuels for combustion engines
- focused on the production of hydrogen
- centred around off-vehicle charging infrastructure
- focused on a micromobility application
- focused on vehicle level production
- 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.