Guest blog: Not every egg will become a bird, but government funding creates credibility for future investment

Firstly, let me give you a brief insight into the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC), for those who are not familiar with this fairly unique organisation and my role within it.

The APC is a non-profit organisation, established in 2013 to bridge the gap between industry, academia, and government within the automotive sector. This began as a joint £1bn in funding commitments from the public and private sector to support industry led late-stage collaborative research and developmemt (CR&D) projects for low carbon technology on vehicles.

My role as Head of Competitions and Projects, is to develop the products we offer as competitions for the industry required intervention, and if successful through the independent assessment process my team supports the successful projects to maximise their delivery, spillover benefits, and added value.

We are all very aware of the challenge that the UK automotive industry faces.

• Organisations have had to accelerate the transition from traditional and well-established propulsion solutions to consider several alternatives as one solution is not going to fit all applications, to comply with policy requirements – this is time consuming and expensive.
• The UK supply chain has got to pivot or in certain situations be created from scratch.
• Private investment is extremely challenging for UK automotive organisations where technology is perceived to be risky, so how do businesses afford to do this whilst still being commercially viable.

I am sure you can provide a much wider range of challenges, but the common statement is “we just can't do it all.”

So, giving away money is easy right? Yes, in principal but to the right CR&D projects at the right time; not so much. There are so many good innovative ideas out there in the UK, but the stars need to align on so much more: We all know CR&D is exciting, but let's face it, it is also extremely expensive and without realistic demand signals too many organisations either run out of money, or simply can no longer stomach the risk appetite this distraction brings to their business. This is why the government and APC funding intervention is crucial financially but as importantly it brings with it the wider added value and support to grow both the supply chain and UK’s capability in these new zero-emission technologies.

But we still need to ensure we are backing credible organisations with the right funding. What we need to do is nudge the needle to make the project viable and this intervention does exactly that.

• Companies need to be financially stable - don’t forget the companies involved are investing a huge amount of money themselves but the funding allows them to bring products to market that would either remain as ideas or would not exist commercially at the accelerated pace.
• The opportunity to work collaboratively is critical to use the overused quote by Aristotle “the whole is greater than the sum of parts” is so applicable – getting OEM’s, innovators, supply chain and academics in a project produces magic, nevertheless collaborative projects come with their own challenges

Some CR&D projects will fail, not every egg will become a bird, but fundamentally having a project supported by government funding creates credibility for future investment. We do not pick winners, what we intend to do is enable companies to be able to compete on an international playing field now and in the future.

In the last 10 years APC has funded 261 projects, involving 480 unique organisations, helping to secure 58,000 jobs and reduce carbon tailpipe emissions by 400 Mt tonnes; we can clearly demonstrate it is working. The APC mission remains to leverage the UK’s rich legacy for innovation and entrepreneurship and support the growth of a sustainable and robust domestic supply chain, focused on developing zero-emission technology for a rapidly evolving automotive market as we continue to demonstrate that it makes a difference. With reflection and 20 years working with a ridiculously clever and dedicated team, I 100% believe and know that government intervention has an absolutely critical part to play in keeping the lights on in our much loved and respected UK automotive industry.

Get in touch, especially if you have been involved in the funding ecosystem either in the UK or further afield.

Zoe Hall is Head of Competitions and Projects at the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC)