Up to £150 million is on offer in Drawdown 6 of the DRIVE35 Scale-up Fund, for UK businesses building the pilot and demonstration factories that will make zero emission vehicle technology.
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) funds this competition, and the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) and Innovate UK deliver it. It's for companies with a validated technology that now need to build the line to make it at volume. The big condition is co-investment, because you must unlock at least £2 of private investment for every £1 of grant.
Below, I have explained the key things you need to know about this competition before you apply: who is eligible, how much funding is on the table, and what the application process looks like.
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Who is Eligible?
Your Organisation
To lead a project or apply on your own, you must be a UK registered business of any size, from a micro, small or medium-sized enterprise to a large corporate.
You can bring in the following UK registered organisations as collaborators:
- Academic institutions
- Businesses of any size
- Charities
- Not-for-profit organisations
- Public sector organisations
- Research and technology organisations (RTOs)
Academic institutions and RTOs can't lead a project or work alone. In a collaboration, you and at least one other organisation must request funding.
You can also include partners who don't claim funding, and these can be EU or other non-UK organisations. You can use subcontractors too. If you want to use one from overseas, you must show why UK subcontractors can't do the work, and a lower price won't count as a reason.
Your Project
Your project must:
- Have a grant request of between £2.5 million and £20 million
- Have total eligible costs of at least £5 million
- Last at least 12 months, including any time you spend raising co-investment after your award
- Start from 1 September 2027, on the first of a month
Any spending after 31 March 2030 needs extra government approval.
All funded work must be carried out in the UK, and you must intend to exploit the project results from or within the UK. You must also spend most of your funding in the UK.
Your project must also:
- Align with the UK Industrial Strategy and the Automotive Council's Roadmaps
- Build or convert a facility, or validate a process, at pilot or demonstration scale
- Focus on technology for on-board vehicle use in at least one of the eight areas below
- Prepare you to enter an on-highway or off-highway vehicle market
- Strengthen the growth, transition and resilience of the UK automotive supply chain
- Unlock private investment of at least twice your grant request
The eight technology areas are:
- Electric machines and associated driveline
- Electrical energy storage, including batteries, supercapacitors, their components, management and integrated systems
- Fuel cell systems and associated balance of plant
- Hydrogen storage and management systems
- Internal combustion engines for off-road use, where the project supports a move to zero emissions using non-fossil fuels
- Lightweighting materials and manufacturing processes
- Power electronics, including Vehicle to Everything (V2X)
- Zero emission vehicle assembly
On-highway markets include motorbikes, cars, light commercial vehicles, buses, coaches and trucks. Off-highway markets include construction, agriculture and mining machinery.
You don't have to be building the finished technology yourself. Within those eight areas, your project can cover the upstream supply chain, like raw materials, components and subassemblies. It can also cover circularity, like systems for disassembly, remanufacturing and reuse, and deploying digital tools, process decarbonisation or lean manufacturing in your production.
The competition doesn't set a minimum Technology Readiness Level (TRL), but you must evidence your TRL and Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) in the application.
Innovate UK won't fund projects that:
- Are focused on energy or fuel retail, or wholesale energy or fuel supply
- Are focused on off-vehicle charging infrastructure
- Are focused on producing hydrogen or low carbon fuels
- Are focused on small personal mobility, like e-scooters and e-bikes
- Are focused on speculative site enabling
- Are mainly about digital or data technology
- Are too technologically immature to scale with market demand
- Aren't mainly about developing and validating manufacturing processes and assets
- Depend on export performance, or on using a set percentage of UK components
- Don't have a robust plan to enter the zero emission vehicle supply chain
- Don't lead to significant business or production scale-up
- Focus on fossil fuelled internal combustion technology
How Much Funding Can I Apply For?
The amount you can claim depends on your organisation's type and size and the sort of research your project involves.
Individual grants range from £2.5 million to £20 million.
Applying as a Company
| Project Type | Micro and Small | Medium | Large |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial Research* | 50% | 50% | 30% |
*Industrial research refers to planned research aimed at acquiring new knowledge for developing new products, processes, or services.
Funding Example
If you're a small company with total eligible project costs of £10 million, you could claim a grant of £5 million. You will need to fund the remaining £5 million from other sources, like R&D Tax Relief, investment or loans.
You'd also need to show that the grant unlocks at least £10 million of private investment into your wider business expansion, taking total investment to at least £15 million.
Every organisation that receives a grant pays an industrial contribution of 3.5% of each grant payment to the APC. That's £175,000 on a £5 million grant, and you can't claim it as a project cost.
Raising Co-investment
Your co-investment can be equity, debt or corporate funding, but it can't include other government grants. It must come in at the grant award stage or during delivery, and you must show it wouldn't happen without the grant.
If you haven't closed it by the time you're awarded, you get up to nine months to raise it. This can be extended by three months, plus one more if you're in the very final stages. During this period you can spend up to 10% of your grant or £1 million, whichever is lower, on limited project activity. If you don't raise the money in time, your grant offer lapses.
The National Wealth Fund can also finance electric vehicle supply chain projects, and its money counts as private co-investment. You can opt in through your application if you need at least £25 million and every part of your project is at TRL 7 or above.
What You Can Claim For
You can claim capital costs on this competition, like equipment, construction, refurbishment and fit-out, alongside labour, materials and subcontractors. You can't claim working capital, contingency, the purchase of land or property, or materials you sell through limited commercial activity.
Applying as a Non-Commercial Organisation
Research organisations doing non-economic work can share up to 10% of the total eligible project costs, and are funded at higher rates:
- Up to 100% of eligible costs if you're a charity, not-for-profit, public sector organisation, research organisation or RTO
- Up to 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you're an academic institution using the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) method
How Do I Apply?
The deadline for applications is 27 January 2027.
Applications are submitted via Innovate UK's Innovation Funding Service (IFS) portal.
Innovate UK won't answer queries between 23 December 2026 and 4 January 2027, so send yours early.
The application is split into three sections:
Project Details
This unscored section gives background on your project and covers:
- Application details
- Application team
- Project summary
- Public description
- Research category
- Scope
Most answers in this section are limited to 400 words.
Application Questions
There are 29 questions in total:
- Nine unscored questions covering topics like animal testing, international collaboration, trusted research, your track record, your current business and National Wealth Fund finance
- 20 scored questions covering your market, product, commercialisation plan, technology and manufacturing readiness, manufacturing growth plan, risks, costs, supply chain, team, leadership, investment plan, financial business case, value for money, the case for public funding, and your impact on UK investment, jobs, emissions, the automotive supply chain and R&D spillovers
Almost every scored question needs an appendix, usually a PDF of up to two A4 pages. You must also complete a Value for Money workbook in Excel.
Finances
Each organisation must complete its own project costs, organisation details and funding details.
Your application will be reviewed by five independent assessors. Their individual scores will be combined to decide whether you go through to interview.
Economists at BIST also assess whether your project offers good value for money, and HM Treasury will only release your grant if it clears that threshold. This is an extra hurdle you won't find on a standard Innovate UK competition, so your economic case needs to be as strong as your technical one.
If you're successful, you'll be notified by 11 May 2027. Applications that pass the initial assessment may be invited to an interview between 6 and 8 April 2027, held at the APC's offices in Coventry.
Innovate UK says similar competitions suggest a 30% chance of success. It plans to open Drawdown 7 on the next working day after this round closes, but an unsubmitted application won't carry over.
Like with most competitions, Innovate UK takes a 'portfolio approach' by funding projects across different technologies, markets and technological maturities. This means that a strong score won't necessarily guarantee that your application will be successful.
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