UK Innovators Decarbonising Our Transport

0:16 – 0:26

This is the Hydro Shunter. It’s a hydrogen and battery drivetrain solution for heavy duty rail. It’s been applied to a shunting vehicle which will get sites used to having hydrogen and hydrogen technology.

0:32 – 0:47

So the Powerpod is a fully off grid charging and storage solution for light electric vehicles and you can site it anywhere at all. It doesn’t need a grid connection. Not only providing on the go e bike charging, but making it solar powered as well.

0:52 – 1:22

The Car Club in a box concept was really about helping other communities across the UK to be able to set up community level car clubs. And we realised through the Don’t Valley Car Club, having a volunteer driver scheme for people that can’t drive themselves was really unique and it’s bringing all of that knowledge together in a really easy to access package for other communities. So the original TRIG programme was for us to develop a piece of software to allow us to optimise drivetrains, especially hydrogen and battery drivetrains. That’s been instrumental in Vanguard growing. It’s allowed us to offer more new products and new services to commercial partners.

1:22 – 1:45

The TRIG funding really allowed us to research the idea in more detail, to validate it, to know whether it was possible to make it work. We’ve then managed to secure funding through the Royal Countryside Funds to help us make that program operational. So there’s lots of elements that have kind of connected to that as well. That’s been really helpful for us working with the Norfolk Broads for the Connected Places Catapult rural accelerator project. It’s been brilliant.

1:45 – 2:20

It’s helped us to develop and evolve the Powerpod design to do that product development work, that ready to market work to get the design of the power pod to be the best it could have been. So the big thing for us is getting this demonstrator out on the railway, working in real world environments. We then want to build on the technology, want to grow the drivetrain, scale it up to being for larger locomotives for passenger applications and actually start getting it being used by commercial operators. We have just had our first order through for our first contract for another community down in Leicestershire. So we’d like to make it much bigger and roll it out to other communities across the UK.

2:20 – 2:51

We’re installing our charging stations everywhere around the UK and in five years time Intelligen will be responsible for building the UK’s zero carbon transport network. The support we’ve had through Connected Places Catapult has been fantastic. To take an idea into reality, I think it’s really fundamental that this can really help you and actually brings you some commercial success. The Catapult has been quite transformational, actually, in accelerating our products to market. As a small business, you’ve got to explore all avenues of support.

2:51 – 3:00

It’s allowed us to move from that initial R and D phase through to having a product that’s almost ready for commercialisation. And the Trig program has been absolutely perfect for helping Vanguard move forwards.

3:13 – 3:30

Sam.