This collaborative Industrial Research project brings together the partners of Shield-Engineering, PUNCH-Flybrid, EMPEL-Systems and PFS-Manufacturing to develop innovative electric-motors, inverters and energy storage systems, ultimately resulting in three new UK manufacturing centres, creating \>750 jobs overall, saving 250,000tonnes CO2/year and anchoring key technology for near-term hybridised ICE/BEV vehicles in the UK. This will enable EMPEL, an SME to manufacture inverters, Shield, a UK Tier2 to evolve into an Automotive Tier1 e-motor manufacturer, PUNCH-Flybrid's technology to be anchored in the UK and PFS-Manufacturing to manufacture automotive flywheels in the UK.

The project addresses the automotive council strategic technologies to provide state-of-the-art electric machines and power electronics, alternative hybrid propulsion systems and energy storage systems using flywheel energy storage.

This is achieved through development of two innovate products:

* Modular, multi-voltage, scalable e-motor with integrated inverter technology, at \>15kW/kg almost double the Automotive Council targets for e-motor power-weight ratio.
* Modular flywheel energy storage technology integrated with e-motor and inverters that achieve double the state-of-the-art power-density of battery packs at lower cost.

The technology will be validated on two vehicle platforms, a sports-car which pushes the envelope of power-weight ratio for flywheel and e-motor technology, and a light commercial vehicle to prove up to 25% CO2 emissions improvements from fuel saving and brake energy recovery.

Key components such as motor internals, forgings and die-casting will be developed within the UK supply chain to anchor the technology in the UK providing growth for UK manufacturing.

Overall this project will deliver R&D directly worth £13.27M (including £2M overseas) with £5.63M of APC funding to generate three pilot plants for production of e-motors, inverters and flywheels. Over the following 7 years the partners will invest in scaling-up the three manufacturing plants to produce \>40,000/year e-motors, inverters and flywheels creating \>750 jobs in the process. The technology will also be exploited for off-highway and industrial applications including green technologies.

This project will be transformational for UK electric motor and inverter production whilst enabling UK flywheel technology, originally born from F1 racing, to be successfully commercialised.