Nearly £130 million of matched public and private investment is being directed into UK zero-emission vehicle technology, manufacturing scale-up and connected mobility projects, with the government expecting the package to support more than 1,800 high-value manufacturing jobs.
The programme includes almost £65 million of government funding matched by industry and sits within the UK Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy. Around £50 million of public funding has been awarded to automotive companies and R&D partners working on zero-emission vehicle technologies, while a further £17 million is supporting nine Connected and Automated Mobility Pathfinder projects.
The automotive funding is being delivered through DRIVE35, the government programme intended to support vehicle R&D, scale-up and industrial transformation through to 2035. Its scope extends beyond prototype vehicles into the manufacturing capability needed to commercialise motors, batteries, controls, materials and other systems at competitive volumes.
Projects selected for scale-up funding include Turntide Technologies, EMPEL Systems, Cornish Lithium, Strip Tinning and Watercycle Technologies. Collaborative and demonstration programmes involve companies including Bentley Motors, Q5D Technologies, YASA, Nexperia UK, Anaphite, Eatron Technologies and Electra Commercial Vehicles, reflecting the breadth of technologies now being pulled into the electrification supply chain.
The industrial challenge is increasingly one of repeatability rather than invention. A drivetrain component can perform convincingly in development while remaining too slow, labour intensive or expensive to manufacture at automotive volumes. Tooling, process control, inspection, automation and supplier qualification have to develop alongside the product if a promising design is to become commercially useful.
That transition can expose weaknesses that prototype programmes tolerate. Assembly processes that depend heavily on experienced operators may struggle when output rises, while material variation that is manageable across dozens of parts can become an expensive quality problem across thousands. Higher volume also increases the penalty attached to slow inspection, rework or components that arrive outside tightly controlled specifications.
UK manufacturers are already confronting those issues in axial-flux motors. YASA is expanding axial-flux production capability in Oxfordshire, where manufacturing processes covering winding, joining, impregnation, balancing and inspection are being developed for series applications. Turntide’s newly selected DRIVE35 project is addressing a similar scale-up problem through additional automation at its North East operations.
The £17 million Connected and Automated Mobility Pathfinder element widens the industrial requirement beyond propulsion. Projects involving Aurrigo, Bosch-owned Five AI, Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK, Oxford RF and other partners cover airport vehicles, highway applications, sensing, brake-by-wire hardware, simulation and automated mobility services.
Automated vehicle programmes are sometimes characterised primarily as software development, yet deployment depends on physical systems operating predictably outside controlled trials. Sensors have to remain calibrated, actuators need repeatable response, electronic systems must tolerate vibration and electrical noise, and braking and steering hardware has to operate within defined safety limits across long duty cycles.
Those requirements create manufacturing work around electronics, power systems, test equipment, communications hardware and mechanical assemblies. They also increase the importance of cybersecurity and configuration control because vehicle behaviour increasingly depends on the relationship between software and physical components rather than either discipline in isolation.
The North East and West Midlands remain prominent within the wider programme because both already have substantial automotive manufacturing and engineering bases. The government says £100 million of DRIVE35 grant funding is being delivered to supply chain businesses in those regions as they prepare for the electric vehicle transition, alongside the projects announced in the latest round.
The employment figures attached to the programme should be treated as intended outcomes rather than completed recruitment. Government expects the latest investment to support more than 1,800 jobs and additional employment through supply chains, while DRIVE35 is intended to support more than 50,000 direct jobs by 2035. Individual projects still have to complete approval processes, attract matched investment and deliver the production capability on which those projections depend.
The same caution applies to forecasts for connected and automated mobility. Government cites an industry estimate that the UK CAM sector could contribute around £66 billion to the economy by 2040, but the eventual figure will depend on regulation, international competition, deployment rates and whether technology developed in Britain is also manufactured and supported here.
The latest funding therefore reaches an increasingly important part of the automotive transition. Britain has little shortage of vehicle engineering projects, but the economic return depends on how many survive the less glamorous journey through tooling, validation, automation, quality control and volume production. Nearly £130 million of matched investment gives another group of projects the opportunity to make that journey; factories and order books will provide the more useful scorecard.
