Connected and autonomous vehicles test bed

Proposals should integrate existing proving grounds and public road test sites across the UK’s existing automotive and technology heartlands. They should improve existing capabilities and create new ones.

Innovate UK and Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) wish to establish an open environment of projects to work together as part of a UK-wide initiative.

This competition has 3 streams, these are as follows:

Stream 1: 1 to 2 public test environments in an urban and/or highly dense city location.

Stream 2: a controlled test facility representative of an urban and/or city environment. Projects submitted in this stream may include:

• semi-controlled environments such as university campuses and science and industry parks where the semi-controlled nature of the facility can be clearly demonstrated
• a virtual environment that includes physical elements, for example, simulators

Stream 3: a realistic, controlled high-speed, limit-handling environment. This environment will enable the creation of a diverse range of test scenarios. Some examples include vehicle to everything (V2X) interactions, collision avoidance and limit handling. Projects submitted in this stream may include a virtual environment that includes physical elements, such as simulators.

Please note, for all streams, linked proposals will be considered favourably if they save costs and improve outcomes.

For further details on test environments and test facility locations, please click here.

Eligibility

To be part of a project, you must:

• be a UK-based business of any size
• carry out your project in the UK
• work in collaboration with others (for example, businesses, research or third sector organisations)

Funding and project types

CCAV are expecting to invest:

• stream 1: up to £35 million to support up to 2 projects
• stream 2: up to £7 million to support a single project
• stream 3: up to £13 million to support a single project

Preference will be given to projects that can deliver operational facilities and be open for business in 12 to 18 months.

Projects with industry match funding within the investment stage of the project (that is, a 12 to 18 month build phase) will be preferred.

You may apply for funding support:

• up to 50% of your eligible project costs if you are a business of any size
• up to 100% of your eligible project costs if you are a non-profit distributing research organisation.

Projects are expected to have:

• at least a 30% industry contribution to the initial investment
• at least a 50% industry contribution to the lifetime costs of the facility