Third round of automotive Advanced Route to Market Demonstrator funding opens

Design it, demonstrate it, deliver it

The Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC) has today, Monday 25 March 2024, launched the third round of the Advanced Route to Market Demonstrator (ARMD) programme. 

The ARMD programme supports UK-registered businesses who can physically demonstrate how a grant for their project would result in accelerated development of their product and generate a route to market, the potential for scalability or build an advantage for the UK against other competing markets.  

ARMD is part of the APC’s Collaborative Research and Development (CR&D) portfolio, a funding stream created to support the industrialisation and scale-up of the UK’s transition towards the development of a UK zero-emission automotive supply chain. 

The ARMD competition is open to business-led, late-stage R&D projects that demonstrate advanced propulsion technologies. 

• The output of these projects must be in the form of a physical or digital demonstrator. 
• Applicants should illustrate how their project has the potential to accelerate technology development and must describe how the end product will be brought to market.  
• The project’s total grant funding request must be between £500,000 and £1.5 million and must be a minimum of 50% match funded. 
• Projects must be completed within a 12-month timescale, with the opportunity to be operated or displayed at the Cenex Expo event in 2025. 

The aim of this competition is to develop a product or process demonstrator, to show increased capability, and commercial exploitation opportunity, as a result of the project. The project will utilise future zero-emission powertrain technology to accelerate the UK’s transition to net zero.  

The primary application for technologies developed through this competition should be for the automotive sector, however, potential applications in other sectors can also be highlighted. 

Vehicle applications in scope include; on and off-road, agricultural, heavy duty/mining, and urban goods delivery vehicles (including two-wheelers).  

Proposals must work towards the delivery of zero emissions on-vehicle technologies for on-road or off-road vehicles, in one or more of the following areas: 

• energy storage, batteries*  
• fuel cell systems*  

• electric machines*  
• power electronics*  
• fossil-fuel-free internal combustion, at the point of use, for on-road solutions*2,  
• lightweight materials, manufacturing, design methods and processes 
• on-vehicle hydrogen storage and management systems 
• design for circular economy and sustainability, including the disassembly, recovery, and reuse of materials used in the project technologies 
• digitalisation of design for manufacture and recycling, development of zero- emissions vehicle innovation, manufacture of vehicle systems and sub-systems, data analytics, redesign, test, validation, and verification 

*and their components and integration systems 

*²  We will only support project proposals which aim to achieve zero harmful tailpipe emissions

Key dates 

Stage 1 

Competition opens: 25 March 2024 

Applicant Q&A session: 2 April 2024, 11:00 BST (register to join online) 

Application deadline: 1 May 2024, 11:00 BST  

Project start date (latest): 1 October 2024