Key Features
UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £2 million for feasibility studies which target early commercial connected and automated mobility (CAM) opportunities. This funding is from the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV).
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £2 million
Opens: 2nd Dec 2024
Closes: 15th Jan 2025
The Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work together to invest up to £2 million in innovation projects.
The aim of this competition is to target early commercial Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) opportunities and support the UK supply chain to grow and fill technology gaps necessary for their deployment.
Your project must investigate the feasibility of potential solutions to issues encountered by your organisation or the industry, in introducing CAM technologies or services.
Terminology in your application must comply with the meanings as per BSI Flex 1890 v5.0:2023-03: Connected and automated vehicles – Vocabulary.
Portfolio approach
Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across themes, geographies, different technologies, sectors, markets, and technological maturities. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach.
Your project must focus on one of the following themes:
Theme 1: Technical Concepts – Vehicle platforms and technology
Feasibility studies which target the introduction of NUIC ready platforms.
Including:
Theme 2: Overcoming Barriers:
Feasibility studies to identify and address one or more key barriers toward the safe and secure removal of the safety driver.
Your project must develop detailed techniques, procedures, agreements or other declared document outputs to overcome the identified barriers to accelerate the adoption of CAM services.
These outputs shall be made available to the industry, at least in summary form. These may be evidenced with real world cases or examples as appropriate.
The following are examples of such barriers:
Theme 3: CAM Service – Enabling Near-Term CAM Opportunities
Feasibility studies to produce an outline business case for a CAM service. This must focus on opportunities that could operate commercially without safety drivers at a specified location in the UK
Your project must:
Limited trials are allowed only to support the investigation of feasibility of the service.
Your project must:
Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.
You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.
If your project’s grant funding request or start date falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 15 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.
If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
Lead organisation
To lead a project your organisation must:
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Academic institutions and research organisations cannot lead or work alone.
Project team
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 (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in the IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.
To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application. A maximum of four organisations can receive funding on each project.
Non-funded partners
Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition, and combined subcontractor costs must not exceed 30% of the total grant requested.
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 cannot use subcontractors from the UK.
You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
Number of applications
A business, research and technology organisation (RTO), or public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in one further application.
If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to two applications.
Sanctions
This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.
Use of animals in research and innovation
Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.
Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.
You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.
Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:
Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:
Up to £2 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.
The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.
For feasibility studies you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:
For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance.
Research participation
The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.
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