Investing for the future – the APC Projects so far

The Advanced Propulsion Centre made its first round of investments in April 2014, committing £29 million towards low carbon propulsion projects worth more than £61 million following the initial APC competition. The grants were split among four consortia, each with a pioneering low carbon propulsion technology concept. The lead partners for the first programmes were led by Cummins, Ford, GKN and JCB with a total of 23 organisations involved including SMEs, suppliers and universities.

GKN Land Systems and their partners received a £7.5 million grant as part of a £16 million project to apply Formula 1 KERS technology from Williams Hybrid Power (now GKN Hybrid Power) for use in buses. The Gyrodrive system is designed to save the braking energy of a bus as it slows for a stop and use it to accelerate the bus back up to speed. By avoiding wasting the energy every time a bus stops the system delivers fuel savings of up to 25%.

Since April 2014, two further grant funding competitions (APC2 and APC3) have taken place and the APC has now invested in 10 major low carbon propulsion projects worth more than £174 million which will secure or create more than 4,500 jobs in the UK and reduce CO2 emissions by more than 12 million tonnes, equivalent to the CO2 emissions from 630,000 new cars, every year, for the next 12 years.

The fourth APC funding competition (APC4) offering collaborative consortia the opportunity to have access to APC resources closed on 1st July 2015 and the results will be announced in Autumn 2015. The next funding competition (APC5) will open during Winter 2015, but urgent applications can be considered through an ‘exceptional process’.