DRIVE35: Scale Up Fund

Key Features

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £150 million, to create scale up manufacturing facilities for zero emission vehicle technologies.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £150 million

Opens: 17th Jun 2026

Closes: 17th Jun 2027

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Grant Overview

DRIVE35 is a Department for Business and Trade led programme aimed at transforming the UK’s automotive industry. They will work alongside Innovate UK to invest up to £150 million as part of the DRIVE35 Scale Up Fund.

Grant Scope

The aim of this competition is to support manufacturing facilities and process development at pilot or demonstration scale.  Proposals must justify the funding required with a case for government intervention and matched by substantial private investment.

Projects must follow the following technology scope:

  • Electrical energy storage
  • Electric machines and associated driveline
  • Power electronics including Vehicle-to-Everything
  • Internal combustion engine for off-road applications
  • Light-weighting materials and manufacturing processes
  • Fuel cells systems and associated balance of plant
  • Hydrogen storage and management systems
  • Zero-emission-vehicle assembly

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for this grant, projects must be a single applicant or consortia led organisation with a grant funding request of between £2.5 million and £20 million and total eligible project costs of at least £5 million. Projects should last for at least 12 months and start from 1st March 2027 with an end date of 31st March 2030.

Lead organisation: To lead a collaborative project or work alone, organisations must be a UK registered business of any size. Research and technology organisations and Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

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

Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisations that do not claim funding for their own work on the project. These costs must be covered from their own resources and can include UK. EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work within their home country and exploit results outside the UK.

Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. Overseas subcontractors can be used, but you must state why UK subcontractors could not be used in the application.

Number of applications: Businesses can lead or collaborate on any number of applications. Academic institutions, research and technology organisations, charity, not for profit or public sector organisations can collaborate on any number of applications.

Previous applications: Previously used applications can be used in this competition.

Grant Exclusions

Innovate UK will not fund the following projects:

  • Projects focussed primarily on developing and validating manufacturing processes and assets
  • Projects requesting more that 50% of the total project cost as a grant for an SME or 30% for a large organisation
  • Projects not aligned with the UK Industrial Strategy
  • Projects that do not have a robust future plan to enter the zero-emission vehicle supply chain and are not a future benefit to the automotive sector
  • Projects that are focussed on small personal mobility applications
  • Projects that do not lead to significant business or production scale up and expansion and are focussed on technologies or processes too technology immature to scale with market demand
  • Projects focussed on fuel retail or wholesale fuel supply
  • Projects focussed on fossil fuelled internal combustion technology or the production of hydrogen
  • Projects focussed on development or production of low carbon fuel, energy retail or wholesale energy
  • Projects focussed on off-vehicle charging infrastructure or primarily on the development of digital or data technology
  • Projects focussed on speculative site enabling projects

Grant Funding

Innovate UK have allocated up to £150 million in this Scale up competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation or economic activity. The grant requested must be the minimum required to ensure sustainability of the investment.

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

  • up to 50% if you are a micro, small or medium sized organisation
  • up to 30% if you are a large organisation

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 10% 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 10% you can get funding for your 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.

APC industry support

In securing funding from this programme, each participant receiving a grant will pay an industrial contribution to the APC operating budget. This is set at 3.5% and is payable on each grant payment received. The cost cannot be included as an eligible cost in your application.

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

Full competition details

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