Wireless electric vehicle charging for commercial users: feasibility studies

Overview

Innovate UK and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) will invest up to £20 million across this 2-phase competition for innovative projects to develop technology and business cases for wireless charging for electric vehicles (EVs) for commercial users – such as taxis, service vehicles and delivery fleets.

This is phase 1 of the 2-phase competition. Phase 2 will be for demonstrators, and will only be open for successful applicants from phase 1.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to support new integrated technologies and infrastructure solutions. These will allow commercial and service vehicles in towns and cities to top up their EV batteries throughout the day without having to stop work to plug in and charge.

Your proposal must demonstrate commercially feasible business models and solutions that minimise business disruptions to charge taxis, service and commercial electric vehicles.

Projects must be based around a demonstration of viable static or semi-dynamic wireless EV charging solutions for taxis and commercial vehicles and show real-world benefits. These must:

• be clearly tested
• have a scalable business model and a route to market
• where possible, provide evidence of insights into the behaviours of EV users and all road users

Exclusions

They will not fund projects that:

• seek to implement dynamic wireless charging for ‘charge as you drive’ systems, such as electrification of entire highway or city road lanes
• will cause a significant disruption of public roads
• target private users
• focus on battery research and development
• seek to implement wireless EV charging exclusively for autonomous vehicles
• have smart charging and vehicle-to-grid technologies as their main focus

Eligibility

To be eligible for funding, you must:

• be a UK based business, academic organisation, charity, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO)
• carry out your project work in the UK, unless a strong case is made to do otherwise
• work in collaboration with other businesses, research organisations or third-sector organisations

Your project must:

• start by December 2018, end by March 2019, and can last up to 3 months
• be collaborative and business-led
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Funding Costs

Total costs for your phase 1 feasibility study should be between £75,000 and £120,000.

A total of up to £20 million is being invested to fund innovation projects in this 2-phase competition.

The total funding being provided is:

• up to £600,000 for phase 1 feasibility studies
• up to £19.4 million for phase 2 demonstrators

The funders reserve the right to move funds between the phases. This depends on the quality of applications received and the balance of projects across the 2 phases.

In this phase, for feasibility studies , you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

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

Research and technology organisations can receive 100% of their eligible project costs. Universities can receive 80% of full economic cost. In any project, a maximum of 30% of total eligible project costs can be spent by the research organisations involved.