Alongside the headline-grabbing £380m for Tata’s gigafactory in Somerset, Zenzic announced the winners of its CAM Pathfinder Feasibility Studies 2 competition.
While the lion’s share of new Department for Business and Trade (DBT) automotive funding went to electrification, via the DRIVE35 programme, all self-driving eyes were on Zenzic and CAM Pathfinder.
On 9 April 2026, eight new UK feasibility projects were given the green light, tasked with demonstrating a business case for connected and automated mobility solutions in strategic, near-commercial environments. They are, in alphabetical order…
- ASPIRE: Project partners, including Bamford Bus Company (Wrightbus), Loughborough University and Queen’s University Belfast, will study the critical UK mobility challenge of driver shortages and rising operational costs.
- Airside Staff Transport Concept: A business model study led by Fusion Processing to identify the staff, processes and investments required to deliver cost savings and efficiency gains at UK airports.
- Private-Hire Services in London: A study led by Odysse to explore using Level-4 private hire automated vehicles (AVs) in high-demand London corridors.
- North East Vehicle Autonomous Corridor: Project partners, including BCA, National Highways, Newcastle University, Perform Green, South Tyneside Council and Sunderland City Council, will study the deployment of autonomous electric HGVs on the strategic road freight corridor between the Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK plant at Sunderland and the nearby Port of Tyne.
- Sentinel Shuttle: A project led by Moonbility to study scalable driverless shuttle operations across NHS hospitals and care estates, enabled by real-time onboard monitoring and remote oversight.
- TACTIC: A six-month feasibility study led by the International Centre for Trade and Digital Innovation (iC4DTI), with CENEX as a partner, to produce an investment-ready business case for a driver-out CAM freight service on the Teesside International Airport corridor within Teesside Freeport.
- V-CAL: Project partner,s including the North East Automotive Alliance, Newcastle University, Oxa and LOGISTEED (formerly Vantec) will build on the previous 5G-CAL and V-CAL initiatives to assess the commercial viability of deploying autonomous yard tractors on the Vantec to Nissan route in Sunderland.
- Wellcome Genome Campus (WGC): A project led by WGC itself to explore using connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) to link its Hinxton research centre to the nearby Whittlesford Parkway railway station in Cambridgeshire.
CAM Comment
Mark Cracknell, Programme Director at Zenzic, said: “CAM solutions have the potential to unlock new business opportunities and economic growth in all corners of the country. These feasibility studies will help to articulate the impact that market-ready CAM technologies can have on both business productivity and economic growth.”
Claire Spooner, of Innovate UK, said: “This latest tranche of funding from the CAM Pathfinder programme will enable the UK to unlock the huge future benefits of these new CAM technologies. These projects, around the UK, will develop new solutions for a range of CAM applications and scenarios, and enable the companies behind these innovations to scale and grow.”
On the ASPIRE project in Northern Ireland, Dr Andy Harris, Head of Research at Wrightbus, said: “Driver shortages and the pressure to decarbonise are the two biggest challenges facing UK public transport operators today. ASPIRE gives us the opportunity to explore how autonomous technology, combined with our world-leading zero-emission vehicles, could offer a genuinely transformative solution not just for operators, but for the communities they serve.”
On the Airside Staff Transport Concept, Jim Hutchinson, CEO of Fusion Processing, said: “Airports today operate a mixed fleet of vehicles that were never designed to work together as a system. Our vision is to replace that with a single, integrated service run from one control centre, scaled to the specific needs of each airport. We are actively inviting UK airports to engage with this study and help shape what that future looks like.”
