Introducing driverless cars to UK roads – collaborative R&D projects
The Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, working in partnership with the Technology Strategy Board, are to invest up to £10m in collaborative R&D projects to research further how driverless cars can be integrated into everyday life in the UK.
This competition is part of the Government’s commitment to build on our world-leading science and engineering base and advance the research and development, manufacture and use of driverless cars in the UK.
We aim to establish the UK as the global hub for the R&D and integration of driverless vehicles and associated technologies into society and to attract future investment by identifying up to three urban test locations for further research.
Proposals must be collaborative and business-led. Consortia must include a local authority partner and may also include other businesses and research organisations. Business partners must incur at least 70% of the total eligible project costs.
We expect to fund mainly industrial research projects in which a business partner will generally attract up to 50% public funding for their project costs (60% for SMEs).
We expect projects to range in size from total eligible costs of £5m to £10m, although we may consider projects outside this range.
This competition opened for applicants on 30 July 2014. The deadline for registration is at noon on 24 September 2014 and the deadline for applications is at noon on 1 October 2014.
