Rejection by Innovate UK

 "The ‘Automotive Transformation Fund: Expression of Interest’ assessment process has now concluded. With regret your application has been deemed out of scope and ineligible for funding through the Automotive Transformation Fund. ATF is not funding R&D activity for product or process development which is at prototype or early proof of concept stage. Please continue to review other funding opportunities available via the Innovate UK website."

You will be surprised that despite it being called Innovate, it does not support any innovation, only proven concepts.

"proof of concept" is not allowed.

 From wikipedia: 

"Proof of concept (POC), also known as proof of principle, is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to demonstrate its feasibility,^[1] or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has practical potential. A proof of concept is usually small and may or may not be complete."

 " in the standard ISO 56000:2020 ^[2] defines innovation as "a new or changed entity realizing or redistributing value".

So any idea that is not already used is called a proof of concept. Any EV is therefore still a proof of concept. Just imagine a Solar Power Car. Innovation requires that the design or process must be different from the existing ones so by not allowing any proof of concept, Innovate UK is not interested in any innovation. Even Tesla Cybertruck is not eligible despite having more than a million pre-orders.

 From wikipedia: 4 : "a first full-scale and usually functional form of a new type or design of a construction (such as an airplane)"

So any skyscraper or new house is considered as a prototye but professional engineers and architects build these protypes regularly. A Transparent Car or Cybertruck falls into that category. However, you can see a few Cybertrucks running around town already. Despite skycrapers, custom houses and luxury cars are still technically prototypes, they are still safe and useable and widely produced.The Transparent Car will attempt to do custom manufacturing of a fully functional unit which I do not call a protype because they are not just in "functional form".

Prototypes should be reserved for non-fully functioning objects and I had tried to explain to Innovate UK but unfortunately the explanations are completely rejected. I think there are too many academics in the assessment committee. In the academic environment they do a lot of R&D which means that they produce non-fully functioning prototypes to test various aspects of a hypothesis. Aeroplane manufacturers build prototypes also but they can be converted to full functioning objects and people usually call this process, development, not research.

Which is why we call the F1 sports cars and Tesla Cybertruck as developments, not research. The Transparent Car will need to undergo development because proven components are put together in a different way and in a different shape but we cannot make major changes any more. Similarly for any manufactured objects because they keep on being developed as they are being manufactured with various options and upgrades. What differentiates development from research is that these components are proven technologies but under different loads and connections so still need to be verfied and measured. Professional engineers and architects will determine the outcome based on calculations with some safety margins which is why these professions are highly regulated to ensure the safety of the public and customers.

Research iis different in that we are not sure of the outcome of our calculations. They are more trial and error. It is dangerous and expensive to do research on a manufactured product so non-functioning prototypes are constructed just to get data and formulae to allow engineers to do the calculations more accurately. A lot of universities still do development work for proof of concept instead of pure research but these are wasteful for developing nations like Malaysia especially when non-fully functioning protypes were produced. These prototypes were just discarded instead of being used by customers.