The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade has announced a roughly £65m funding boost to help the development and production of electric vehicles (EVs) and automated vehicles (AVs), with industry matching the investment to bring the total to £130m.

The cash allocation is intended to ‘ramp up cutting-edge new zero-emission vehicle technologies' and support 1,800 ‘high-value' manufacturing jobs.

Delivered under the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy, almost £50m has already been awarded to auto firms and ‘key R&D partners' via the DRIVE35 scheme to help them ‘build and produce the zero-emission vehicle technologies of the future at scale'.

The Government is also investing £17m into nine successful connected and automated mobility (CAM) pathfinder projects, allowing innovators to ‘develop, test and scale cutting-edge transport technologies'.

With the department stating that industry will match the £65m provided by government, the sector will reportedly benefit from a total boost of £130m.

The wider investment programme is reportedly the biggest government investment into the UK's car industry in ‘the post-war era', with £4bn allocated up to 2035 to speed up the electrification of the industry.

Industry minister Blair McDougall said: ‘We're determined to ensure the next generation of vehicles are designed and built here. This investment will secure skilled jobs, strengthen our manufacturing heartlands and help drive the reindustrialisation of Britain.'

Ian Constance, chief executive at the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK, said: ‘The projects announced today demonstrate the depth of innovation and engineering excellence that exists across the UK automotive sector. Through DRIVE35, we are supporting businesses to move promising technologies to commercial deployment and manufacturing at scale.

‘This investment is about far more than individual projects. It is about strengthening the UK's capability to design, develop and build the technologies that will define the vehicles of the future. By bringing together industry, government and academia, DRIVE35 is helping create the conditions for long-term growth, increasing investor confidence and reinforcing the UK's position as one of the world's leading destinations for automotive innovation.'