DRIVE35 Innovation Fund: Collaborate 2

Key Features

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £33 million for late stage collaborative research and development projects. Your project will support the UK’s transition to zero emission vehicles and a pathway to a net zero automotive industry.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £33 million

Opens: 5th Jan 2026

Closes: 18th Mar 2026

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Grant Overview

DRIVE35 is aimed at transforming the UK’s automotive industry and the scale up of innovative zero emission vehicle technologies and unlocking capital investment in zero emission vehicles, batteries and their wider supply chain.

Grant Scope

Drive35 will support the UK’s transition to zero emission vehicles and a pathway to a net zero automotive industry. The aim of strand 1 is to support projects that develop, design and enable the manufacture of technologies.

Proposals need to fall within one of more of the following themes:

Theme 1 – Promote Zero Emission Vehicle Technologies:

Products must focus on one of more of the following areas:

  • Electrical energy storage
  • Electric machines and associated driveline
  • Power electronics e.g. V2X
  • Internal Combustion Engines for on road and off-road applications
  • Lightweight vehicle and powertrain structures
  • Fuel cell systems and associated balance of plant
  • Hydrogen storage and management systems

Theme 2: Enhance Manufacturing Competitiveness

R&D projects which use innovations to enable productivity, cost competitiveness and reduce embedded carbon must focus on one or more of the following areas:

  • Digital transformation e.g. integration of digital tools and the use of AI
  • Manufacturing process decarbonisation
  • Lean manufacturing
  • Supply chain development

Theme 3: Future Vehicle Innovation – SDV and Electrical/Electronic architecture

SDV & E/E architecture is focused on enabling features through software and involves and paradigm shift and redesign. The transformation is critical to supporting zero-emission vehicle functi9ons and leveraging UK Innovation strengths for global competitiveness. This is system, vehicle and process-level evolution in one of more of the following areas:

  • Delivering features faster
  • Innovations in embedded software development and connectivity to enhance performance, safety and time to market
  • Development of advanced control systems software and platforms
  • Scalable and flexible future E/E architectures, comms systems, sensors and actuators
  • vehicle and system level simulation
  • innovation in the safe and secure use of AI
  • Innovations in tools, processes and design practices

Eligibility Criteria

DRIVE35 projects must have a total eligible grant funding request of between £2.5 million and £25 million and be a minimum of 50% match funding. Projects must last between 18 and 36 months and be late-stage R&D targeting direct commercialisation at the end of the project. All project work must be carried out in the UK with intended results exploited in the UK. Projects start on 1st October 2026.

Lead: To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be registered in the UK and be a business of any size. Be a grant claiming recipient and include in your consortium a vehicle manufacturer or Tier 1 supplier who supplies parts directly. Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

Project Teams: To collaborate with the lead your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not for-profit, public-sector organisation or a research and technology organisation.

Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisations who do not claim funding for work on the project. These costs need to be covered by their own resources and can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations.

Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in the competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. If overseas subcontractors are used, you must make a case as to why UK subcontractors could not be used.

Number of Applications: There is no limit to the number of applications an organisation can be involved in

Previous applications: You can use previously submitted applications

Exclusions

The following projects are not being funded:

  • Projects requesting grants of more that 50% of their total project costs
  • Projects focused on business processes not directly involved in the design, test, validation, recycle or reuse of manufacture of vehicles
  • Projects including the design, development, integration, use, test or direct manufacturing of ADS
  • Focussed only on the development of clean fuels
  • Projects not aligned with the UK net zero research innovations framework
  • Projects developing solutions such as e-Scooters or e-Bikes

Grant Funding

Up to £33 million in grant funding has been allocated to fund innovation projects. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

Your total grant funding request must be no more than £25 million and no more than 50% of your total eligible project costs.

A minimum of 70% of your projects total project costs must be incurred by commercial organisations.

The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.

For industrial research projects, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research Participation

Research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. This is the maximum that can be shared between consortiums containing more than one research organisation. Of the 30% you can get funding for eligible project costs of up to:

  • 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic

Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding

  1. Research organisations using the Je-S system must submit their costs through the Je-S system which calculates the 80% FEC figure.
  2. On IFS, only the 80% FEC output should be entered at 100% funding.
  3. Applicants do not need to show the remaining 20% on the finance table.

The Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC)

A 3.5% industrial contribution is payable to the APC by all partners on grant received.

For further information on this competition, please see full details.

Full competition detaild

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