About Us

Our work will include materials discovery, fuel cells, batteries, electric hybrid vehicles, powertrains and more. The lab will be situated in the UCL EAST campus in Stratford, allowing us to use the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as an environmental laboratory for new vehicle technologies, develop the mobility technologies of the future and to engage with the local community.  

Being based at UCL East will have a huge impact on the capacity of the work that can be undertaken by the APL. The centre will feature a vehicle propulsion research laboratory specialising in advanced powertrains, electrochemical power sources and storage (fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors and hydrogen storage) and a live testing ground for automotive, marine, drone, mobility and (dis)ability technologies.  R&D activities will be led at a larger scale than currently possible on the Bloomsbury campus – with environmental testing, including emissions monitoring and air quality analysis; and rapid prototyping such as next-generation electrochemical power trains. The local community will benefit from tangible hydrogen infrastructure in the form of a fuel cell hybrid bus for transport around UCL East and the local transportation network, a hydrogen filling station, and an outreach centre. 

“The electrification of vehicles is one of the grand challenges of our time, with critical need for technologies to reduce carbon emissions and improve urban air quality. The multidisciplinary APL will conduct world leading, translational research across a range of vehicle and power system platforms to deliver this, in partnership with industry. – Paul Shearing, Professor of Chemical Engineering

The APL will also train the next generation of international propulsion scientists and engineers, attracting the brightest students to fill the skills gap in this critical area. New MSc programmes will create innovative entry routes to the field and the local community will benefit from tangible hydrogen infrastructure in the form of a fuel cell hybrid bus for transport around UCL East and the local transportation network, a hydrogen filling station, and an outreach centre.  

As well as providing a leading hub for research and development, we will blur the lines between teaching, research, commercial innovation and outreach. No other research facility in the world currently develops electrochemical technologies, integrates them, and applies these innovations to such a wide range of mobility and transport modes.