Advanced Propulsion Centre - Advanced Route to Market Demonstrator 2 (ARMD2)

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• have an active registered business base in the UK

Academic institutions and research organisations cannot lead projects.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

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

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.

We are looking for business led late-stage R&D projects that will demonstrate advanced propulsion technologies. The output of these projects must be in the form of a demonstrator. Applications must explain how technology development will be significantly accelerated through your project and must clearly describe how these products will be brought to market.

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

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. (For projects which are close to market the limit may be lower than this – 45% for micro SMEs down to 25% for large companies.)

A 3.5% levy is payable to the APC by all partners on grant received.

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.

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 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%.

A virtual briefing event will be held at 11.30am on Monday 18th May: click here to register to attend.

If you want help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Transport team.