Advanced Route to Market Demonstrator – Round 2

Key Features

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £10 million for late-stage R&D projects that help accelerate the UK towards a net zero automotive future.

Programme:     APC

Award:     Share of up to £10 million

Opens: 17th May 2023

Closes: 28th Jun 2023

! This scheme is now closed

Overview

The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) provides funding, support, insight and foresight for the development of low and zero emission transport solutions, and automotive technologies. It aims to support the UK’s transition towards net zero product manufacturing and supply chain in the UK automotive sector.

In this competition round APC is investing up to £10 million in the Advanced Route to Market Demonstrator 2 (ARMD2).

Scope

The aim of this competition is to develop and realise the demonstration of capability that could lead to further business exploitation, utilising future net zero powertrain technology as a key element in the UK transition to zero emissions for the automotive sector.

Capability demonstration can be through a physical vehicle, a physical sub-system or an equivalent digital demonstrator that can be operated or displayed at the Cenex Low Carbon Vehicle event in 2024, as a key element of the dissemination requirements.

Once successfully concluded these projects can be used to seed future development programmes in the UK or potentially attract overseas investment into the UK. In addition the projects must contribute to the UK’s strategic aims and direction of travel towards net zero transport vision, such as the Automotive Council’s Roadmaps.

The primary application for technologies developed through this competition should be for the automotive sector but cross sector application is valuable.

Vehicle applications in scope can include on and off road, agriculture, heavy duty, mining and zero emission urban goods delivery vehicles, including 2 wheelers.

Your project must demonstrate the advancement of on-vehicle technologies in one or more of the following areas:

  • energy storage, batteries and their components, management and integration systems
  • fuel cell and associated balance of plant
  • electric machines
  • power electronics
  • fossil fuel free internal combustion, at the point of use, and in the case of on-road solutions we will support project proposals which aim to achieve zero harmful tailpipe emissions
  • hydrogen storage and management systems
  • digitalisation for either vehicle system or subsystem development, design, test and validation
  • lightweight materials and manufacturing for vehicle and powertrain structures

You will be required to provide a close out report and case study at the end of your funded project.

Specific Themes

You must consider which technology or technologies best represent your project and rank them in order of their significance and impact to your project. The one ranked first must be the lead technology.

The technologies are:

  • electric machines and power electronics
  • energy storage and energy management
  • lightweight vehicles and powertrain structures
  • fuel cell and associated balance of plant
  • thermal propulsion systems and alternative fuels
  • digitalisation for vehicle system or sub-system development, design, test and validation integration

Your lead technology must be at least 50%. You can also rank up to an additional two supporting technologies that can have a maximum of 25% each.

Your percentages must add up to 100%.

Eligibility

Your project must:

  • have a grant funding request between £500,000 and £1.5 million
  • be a minimum of 50% match-funded
  • start by 1 October 2023
  • last between 9 and 12 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

To lead a project your organisation must:

  • be a UK registered business of any size
  • have an active registered business base in the UK
  • be a grant recipient
  • collaborate with other UK registered organisations, where applicable

Academic institutions and research organisations cannot lead projects.

Non-UK registered businesses and research organisations are only eligible to apply for funding if they:

  • set up an active UK-registered business where the funded project work will be carried out
  • provide evidence of an intention to expand their R&D activity in the UK during and after the project

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) 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 IFS.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

There are no limits on the number of applications an organisation can be involved in. If you are successful in more than one application you will be asked to confirm you have the capacity to run multiple projects simultaneously.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition. However you can only submit the same application twice, without a material change.

Exclusions

APC are not funding projects that are:

  • focussed on process or manufacturing
  • focussed on recycling
  • focussed only on the development of clean fuels
  • predominantly off vehicle
  • not aligned with the UK’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution
  • requesting more than 50% grant for total project costs

APC 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

Funding Costs

Up to £10 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

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

The total grant request in your application cannot exceed 50% of the total project costs. This is regardless of the individual partners’ grant claims.

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.

For industrial research projects, you could 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 could 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

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.