Scale-up Fund

DRIVE35's innovative Scale-Up Fund is designed to bridge the gap between innovation and transformation. This critical phase of product or process development is filled with inherent risk and often referred to as the 'Valley of Death' by businesses large and small. It requires significant amounts of investment to ensure an already successfully validated business plan becomes a reality. The funding stream has been specifically designed to overcome the inherent risks of the scale-up phase by supporting the development of new pilot-scale and demonstration-scale 'first-of-a-kind' production processes and facilities and encourage investment, public and private sector, enabling safe passage through the valley of death. Funded by the Department for Business and Trade and delivered in partnership with the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK and Innovate UK, the DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund offers grants of between £2.5m to £20m to UK-registered businesses, large or small, single entity or consortium, to enable rapid scale-up of essential zero-emission vehicle technologies. Through incremental validation of production capability, companies can showcase their readiness for market engagement and growth, leading to further substantial private sector investment and enabling them to reach the end-goal of full-scale industrialisation, further enriching the UK's established automotive zero-emission supply chain.