Pilot-T: New Mobility Solutions 2023

The Project Owner must be registered under the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and that carry out economic activity in Norway. The project owner must either be a private company or a public enterprise that carries out activities of an industrial or business nature. We will use the collective term ‘company’ in the rest of the call for proposals. 

Groups of companies, e.g. industry organisations, sole proprietorships, research organisations and other organisations, are not eligible to apply for funding.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The Project Owner must secure funding for the project (in addition to the Research Council’s funding) and implement other measures necessary to utilise the project results. 

Requirements relating to R&D providers 

The Project Owner must procure services from at least one R&D provider. 

• Norwegian and/or foreign research organisations must participate in the project as R&D providers with responsibility for performing R&D work on assignment for the company or companies participating in the project. Norwegian research organisations must be on the list of approved research organisations: Approved research organisations (forskningsradet.no). The international research organisations must be institutes, university college, universities or equivalent. 
• R&D providers are not required to contribute to project funding, and in general have no rights to the project results. They deliver work on assignment and are paid for this work at market price. If an R&D provider nevertheless wishes to acquire rights to the project results, the price of the agreed assignment can be adjusted by deducting the market value of the rights from the price. 
• The scope of the R&D provider’s role in the project is based on the Project Owner’s and partners’ needs. Therefore, no requirements apply to the scope of work. The R&D provider’s role in the project must be clearly described in the grant application. 
• You can also procure research services from international or Norwegian expert environments that are not research organisations (cf. the first bullet point), but this in itself does not fulfil the requirements relating to R&D providers. 

Other collaborations 

• The Project Owner may carry out the project in cooperation with other companies where these companies will either cover their own costs in full or benefit from Pilot-T project funding. Partners must fulfil the criteria listed under ‘Who is eligible to apply?’ in order to be able eligible to receive funding. Partners is involved in what is known as an effective collaboration with the Project Owner, which entails sharing both the risk associated with the project and the results it generates. Partners whose project costs are covered in part by Research Council funding are recipients of state aid. The Project Owner is not required to collaborate with other companies on the project, but such collaboration may trigger additional state aid if the requirements set out in the state aid rules are met. 
• Public sector actors may participate in the project but will not be eligible to receive funding from the Research Council. Partners from the public sector are also to be included in effective collaboration with the Project Owner and any other partners. 

Please note that Norwegian research organisations cannot be partners (they must be R&D providers, cf. the previous heading). Other international partners that are not suppliers of R&D services may participate in the project provided that this promotes value creation in Norway, but their costs will not be eligible for support from Pilot-T and the international partner must cover all of its own costs. Any international partners must be registered in the grant application form as a collaborating partner, but their costs should be NOK 0 in all the budget tables. However, their costs and how these are to be financed should be described in the specification field below the relevant budget tables. 

State aid may not be given to an undertaking that is subject to an outstanding recovery order following a formal decision by the EFTA Surveillance Authority or the European Commission stating that state aid received is illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor can the Research Council award state aid to an enterprise that is defined as an ‘undertaking in difficulty’ under the state aid rules. 

The application with relevant partners and R&D providers at the time the application is submitted forms the basis for grant allocation. Any changes to the composition of a project before a contract has been entered into must be approved by the Research Council. The changes may result in the Research Council withdrawing its offer of funding. 

Roles in the project 

The number of partners in the project will not determine whether it is successful. A good project, on the other hand, is characterised by each partner having defined tasks and a clear role in the project. 

The Project Owner or partners cannot be in a situation where they can exert a controlling influence on an R&D provider. Nor can an R&D provider exert a controlling influence on the Project Owner or partners. By controlling influence is meant majority ownership or other concrete judicial or actual circumstances that mean that one company can control the other. An R&D provider must be an external source that delivers its services in accordance with the arm’s length principle. See more here.  

Funding for Pilot-T projects is awarded in accordance with the EEA state aid rules, more specifically Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). Among other things, this means that: 

• Funding is only awarded for project costs relating to R&D activities. Activities that are eligible for funding include, but are not limited to, applied research, prototyping, demonstration and pilot testing. 
• Costs for other types of activities and measures to exploit R&D results, such as filing for patents, market surveys and marketing, testing and completion of new products and services are not approved for funding. 
• The level of funding (aid intensity) is subject to limitations and will depend on the project’s R&D content. Activities classified as 'industrial research' are eligible for a higher aid intensity than 'experimental development' activities. 
• Other public funding of the costs eligible for funding will affect the amount of Pilot-T funding that can be granted.  
• Notification of all state aid allocated to the project will be published on the Research Council’s website, and allocated state aid of EUR 500,000 or more will be listed in a public registry. 

The call for proposals has been approved as an aid scheme by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) with the reference: GBER 64/2023/R&D&I. 

Parts of the companies’ costs pertaining to R&D activities under the project qualify for funding. Funding can be provided for both direct and indirect project costs to the extent they can be categorised as costs pertaining to industrial research or experimental development. This applies to costs associated with R&D activities carried out by the project partners, and to costs incurred in connection with purchase of R&D services from R&D providers. 

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on our website. 

Scope of funding 

The amount of funding that may be applied for is limited to a minimum of NOK 2 million and a maximum of NOK 13 million for a project period between one and three years. 

The scope of funding for the company’s project costs depends on the size of the company and the type of R&D activities to be carried out: 

A higher aid than shown in the table above will not be granted. 

Conditions for funding 

The projects must start between 1 April 2024 and 1 September 2024. The latest permitted project completion date is 31 August 2027. 

Support for "undertakings" constitutes state aid. In this context, an "undertaking" means any actor that carries out an economic activity involving the provision of goods and/or services on a given market. When an undertaking receives support to cover a portion of its project costs, either as a Project Owner or as a partner in the project, this support must be awarded in accordance with Article 1 of the General Block Exemption Regulation. 25 (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). 

The Research Council's requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support for the first year, and any pledges and payments for subsequent years, are set out in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects, which can be found in their entirety on the page What the contract involves. 

If you are granted the project, the following must be in place before you enter a contract with us: 

• From 2022, all grant recipients that are research organisations and public sector bodies (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their website. The requirement does not apply to private businesses, special interest organisations or the voluntary sector. 
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.  
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised grant application. Here you will find more information about requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us. 

The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. This must be specified in the project's data management plan. 

The Research Council of Norway 

The Research Council provides funding for projects where new knowledge and testing and/or piloting are needed to implement new technology and new services and business models. Pilot-T projects funded by the Research Council must include procurement of research and development services from an R&D organisation. 

Innovation Norway 

Innovation Norway provides funding for market-based innovation projects that generate value creation in Norway. This may involve new use of existing knowledge as well as projects that comprise development, demonstration and/or testing solutions on the market. The innovation must have a high degree of novelty. Innovation Norway's call for proposals can be found here.  

If you are not sure where to apply, contact us for information and guidance. 

You may revise and resubmit your application form multiple times up to the submission deadline for applications. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the grant application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in Norwegian or English. 
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.  
• At least one R&D provider must be included the grant application form. 
• Any other R&D providers or Norwegian partners must also be registered in the grant application form. 

Mandatory attachments  

• A project description, maximum 10 pages. Use the designated template found at the bottom of the page. 
• The CV of the project manager. Use the designated template found at the bottom of the page. 
• The CVs of key project participants who will perform important R&D activities for the project. Use the designated template found at the bottom of the page. 
• Attachment with information about applicant and partner companies. Use the designated template found at the bottom of the page.

Applications that do not meet the requirements listed above will be rejected.  

Optional attachments 

• We encourage you to submit a proposal for up to three (Scandinavian) referees who are considered impartial and qualified to assess the application. 

All attachments must be submitted together with the application. We will not accept attachments submitted after the deadline for applications unless we have requested further documentation. 

We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above.  

Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form.   

Please note that you are not to enclose letters of intent. 

We assess applications in light of the objectives of the application type in question and on the basis of the following criteria: 

We will prioritise projects that 

• have a high degree of innovation 
• have a female project manager when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par 

The application and mandatory attachments will be made available in a digital portal for referees who will perform an assessment of the criteria ‘Excellence’, ‘Impact’ and ‘Implementation’. The referees will convene in a panel meeting to reach a consensus-based assessment of the grant application for each of these three criteria. 

If the mark awarded by the referee panel for all of the criteria is 4 or higher on a scale where 7 is the highest mark, the application will be assessed by the Research Council’s case officers also on the basis of the criterion “Relevance to the call for proposals”. In assessing this criterion, we attach importance to the project's contribution to making the transport system of the future safer, more navigable and with reduced emissions, by enabling good solutions to be implemented more quickly. 

The assessment and marks for all four criteria will be consolidated into a single, overall mark that indicates the merit of the application. 

We will then draw up a recommendation based on an overall assessment of the project portfolio, which will then form the basis for the portfolio board’s funding decisions. The Portfolio board will emphasise achieving a balanced portfolio of projects within their area of responsibility, including in relation to ongoing projects. 

See also: How we process applications.

We expect to publish which applications have been awarded funding in March 2024.Projects recommended for funding will be required to provide further information about the project and project partners.