Up to £2 million funding available for Feasibility Studies targeting CAM Opportunities (UK)

The Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work together to invest up to £2 million in innovation projects.

The aim of this competition is to target early commercial Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) opportunities and support the UK supply chain to grow and fill technology gaps necessary for their deployment.

Your project must investigate the feasibility of potential solutions to issues encountered by your organisation or the industry, in introducing CAM technologies or services.

Themes

• Your project must focus on one of the following themes:
  • Theme 1: Technical Concepts – Vehicle platforms and technology
    • Feasibility studies which target the introduction of NUIC ready platforms Including:
      • the application of novel components or technologies
      • subsystems which perform tasks the human driver would typically undertake
      • whole vehicle platform design concepts where the primary focus is the optimal integration of the automated vehicle systems
  • Theme 2: Overcoming Barriers:
    • Feasibility studies to identify and address one or more key barriers toward the safe and secure removal of the safety driver.
    • Your project must develop detailed techniques, procedures, agreements or other declared document outputs to overcome the identified barriers to accelerate the adoption of CAM services.
    • These outputs shall be made available to the industry, at least in summary form. These may be evidenced with real world cases or examples as appropriate.
  • Theme 3: CAM Service – Enabling Near-Term CAM Opportunities
    • Feasibility studies to produce an outline business case for a CAM service. This must focus on opportunities that could operate commercially without safety drivers at a specified location in the UK
    • Your project must:
      • investigate viability
      • evaluate technical requirements
      • investigate legal compliance
      • investigate financial modelling
      • evaluate investment needs and customer interest, for near term deployment

Funding Information

• Your project’s total eligible grant funding request must be between £50,000 and £250,000.

Ineligible Projects

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • industrial research or experimental development projects
  • connected vehicle technologies which are not specific to automated vehicles
  • micro goods vehicles, indoor or pavement based robots or vehicles
  • technologies specific to rail vehicles, water borne craft, drones, or aircraft
  • developing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) or Driver Control Assistance Systems (DCAS) unless there is a clear route to full vehicle automation
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project must:
  • have a grant funding request of between £50,000 and £250,000
  • last between 3 and 11 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • start by 1 May 2025
  • end by 31 March 2026
• Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean they need to delay your project start date.
• You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
• If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by them, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
• To lead a project your organisation must:
  • be a UK registered business of any size
  • be a public sector organisation (local authority or transport authority)
  • be an RTO
  • collaborate with up to three other UK registered organizations
• Academic institutions and research organisations cannot lead or work alone.
• 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)
• Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in the IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.
• To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application. A maximum of four organisations can receive funding on each project.
• Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.
• Subcontractors are allowed in this competition, and combined subcontractor costs must not exceed 30% of the total grant requested.
• A business, research and technology organisation (RTO), or public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in one further application.
• If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to two applications.

For more information, visit Gov.UK.