Deadline: December 03, 2025
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT), in partnership with Innovate UK and the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC), has launched the DRIVE35 Scale-up Fund offering up to £150 million to support UK registered organisations in creating manufacturing facilities for zero emission vehicle technologies.
The focus of this fund is to support manufacturing facility and process development at pilot scale or demonstration scale, enabling businesses to validate manufacturing capability and commercial viability. Projects must support growth, transition, and resilience of the UK’s automotive supply chain, contribute to the UK’s strategic aims and priorities such as the Industrial Strategy and the Automotive Council’s Roadmaps, and undertake scale up projects to engineer, create or convert, and validate process development and manufacturing capability at pilot scale or demonstration scale. The technology scope includes electrical energy storage, electric machines and associated driveline, power electronics including Vehicle to Everything (V2X), internal combustion engine (ICE) for off road applications using non-fossil fuels, light weighting materials and manufacturing processes, fuel cell systems, hydrogen storage and management systems, and zero emission vehicle assembly. Projects can also include upstream supply chain activities, circularity and design for disassembly, and deployment of technologies to enable productivity and cost competitiveness in areas such as digital transformation, manufacturing process decarbonisation, and lean manufacturing.
The competition is designed to unlock capital investment and scale up innovative zero emission vehicle technologies. Eligible projects must request between £2.5 million and £20 million in grant funding, with total project costs over £5 million. Projects must last between 12 to 46 months, starting from June 2026 and ending by March 2030. Proposals must clearly justify the need for government intervention and demonstrate substantial private co-investment, at least twice the requested grant amount.
The fund also supports the development of manufacturing readiness through activities such as facility planning and engineering, equipment procurement and commissioning, process development, quality control, and staff training. Limited commercial activity is permitted during the live project phase, provided it remains within the boundaries of research, development, and validation.
This competitive process will adopt a portfolio approach, balancing different technology types, vehicle applications, organisational sizes, and project maturities to ensure alignment with government policy and industrial strategy. While high-quality proposals are encouraged, funding cannot be guaranteed due to the competition’s limit and portfolio considerations.
For more information, visit GOV.UK.
