£20 million boost for advanced lightweight vehicles

The vision to position the UK as a global centre of excellence for the development and production of low carbon propulsion technology has been given another boost by the announcement of a new grant funding competition. An exciting opportunity for up to £20 million investment in collaborative research & development projects aimed to significantly reduce the mass of road-going vehicles has opened up through the partnership between Innovate UK and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV).

The competition “Developing Advanced Lightweight Vehicles” has been announced with the aim to help bring together and develop the best UK supply chain capability and expertise in the areas of advanced lightweight materials. The competition is open to system and sub system redesign and innovation which can lead to significant road vehicle weight reduction in order to reduce CO2 and other emissions.

The competition supports projects which fit into any of the following categories:

• development of the manufacturing processes for advanced lightweight materials to deploy them into more on-vehicle uses, at a cost and manufacturing time which will make them more attractive to be used in medium- and high-volume vehicles
• innovative development of on-vehicle componentry or sub-systems to significantly reduce their mass as well as the vehicle’s overall mass
• development of new componentry which will replace a number of other components or sub-systems to achieve a significant overall reduction in vehicle mass

The competition will give funded projects the chance to fast track into applications for the next APC grant funding competitions to further develop the products and processes towards commercialisation. The competition opens for applications on 24 August 2015 and will be open till the 7 October 2015.

The announcement comes as the APC last week announced that the scope of the APC’s activity that supports the development and production of low carbon propulsion technology in the UK and has now been extended to cover lightweighting projects in both vehicle structures as well as powertrain structures. To read the full story click here.