New £70m automotive R&D facility to open in the UK

A new £70 million R&D centre is to be established in the UK to accelerate innovation of the next generation of clean vehicle powertrains.

Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (IAAPS) will be led by the University of Bath.

Professor Gary Hawley, dean of the Faculty of Engineering & Design at the University of Bath, said: “We began by plotting the technology roadmap required for the development of zero emissions road transport and planned IAAPS to help accelerate that journey.”

That means recognising not just that the technologies are changing faster than ever before – from pure petrol and diesel to electrified, electric, hydrogen and alternative fuels – but that to facilitate this rapid transition, the industry needs new areas of expertise, new development tools, more skills and new ways of facilitating collaboration and innovation.

“IAAPS will focus as much on the how’ as on the what,” continued professor Hawley. “That includes the development of new development processes and simulation techniques, education in new areas of technology and encouraging collaboration between innovators and those who can help realise their ideas.”

Expertise will be drawn from the university’s team of more than 40 academics who are active in relevant areas of research, alongside collaborations with vehicle manufacturers, Tier 1 technology suppliers and specialist innovation businesses.

As an institute of the University, IAAPS cuts across traditional research boundaries, allowing engineering, mathematics, chemistry, psychology and other relevant disciplines to work together to find the best solutions

The University of Bath is already recognised as one of the UK’s leading centres of expertise in next-generation automotive propulsion technologies, with commercial research programmes across a wide range of fields. In 2015 the Faculty of Engineering was appointed to lead the Thermal Propulsion Systems – Systems Efficiency spoke of the UK government’s Advanced Propulsion Centre, more recently providing insight and expertise for the UK Automotive Council’s Automotive Technology Roadmap.

Based at the Bristol and Bath Science Park, IAAPS will provide 11,300m² of R&D facilities, education resources and research cells.

Alongside state-of-the-art engine and chassis dynamometers and laboratories for combustion research, it includes a substantial investment in systems for the development and testing of electrification technologies including battery management and energy storage systems.

IAAPS will be one of the first commercially available facilities to include cells designed for the development and testing of high-voltage battery packs, supercapacitors, new cell designs and other high-energy electrical storage technologies.

IAAPS www.bath.ac.uk/research-institutes/iaaps