Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems

Climate change has been cited as the greatest, most urgent threat to human health (Asayama et al., 2021). However, the greatest barrier to mitigating climate change is the public's widespread lack of engagement with pro-environmental behaviours and policies. Whilst existing research has investigated the basic socio-demographic and psychological predictors of pro-environmental behaviours in the general population (e.g., Gifford & Nilsson, 2014), little work has explored the barriers to environmental behaviour and policy support in vulnerable populations. This is striking since ~20% of the population have a diagnosed mental health condition (GBD, 2017), and 13.9% a developmental disorder (Boyle et al., 2011), with more exhibiting trait-level difficulties. Accordingly, the current work aims to understand the association between psychopathological traits with pro-environmental attitudes, behaviours, and climate policy support. Following this, the cognitive mechanisms underlying these psychopathologies will be explored.

As such, study one will explore the basic links between different mental health conditions and developmental disorders, with pro-environmental attitudes, behaviours, and climate policy support, using an online quantitative questionnaire via Prolific. By gauging which disorders are associated with environmentalism, it can be understood which individuals require focused support, and which types of traits require further investigation in the general population. This work will also highlight if and why different disorders are associated with differential support for various climate-related policies, and therefore which policies require additional provisions to be suitable for atypical individuals.

Objective two will comprise of two studies investigating if the cognitive mechanisms underlying the investigated disorders explain differences in pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. For example, if study one suggests that Conduct Disorder is associated with fewer pro-environmental attitudes/ behaviours, a self-report questionnaire will investigate if in this population, lower empathy explains lower environmental engagement. Depending on the links found between pro-environmental behaviour and ADHD in study one, a second reaction-time based study created in PsychoPy will explore whether attention towards pro-environmental images can be trained to increase pro-environmental engagement. As such, it will investigate the attentional mechanisms behind pro-environmental attitudes/ behaviours.

Impact Summary

This proposal has been developed from the ground up to guarantee the highest level of impact. The two principal routes towards impact are via the graduates that we train and by the embedding of the research that is undertaken into commercial activity. The impact will have a significant commercial value through addressing skills requirements and providing technical solutions for the automotive industry - a key sector for the UK economy.

The graduates that emerge from our CDT (at least 84 people) will be transformative in two distinct ways. The first is a technical route and the second is cultural.

In a technical role, their deep subject matter expertise across all of the key topics needed as the industry transitions to a more sustainable future. This expertise is made much more accessible and applicable by their broad understanding of the engineering and commercial context in which they work. They will have all of the right competencies to ensure that they can achieve a very significant contribution to technologies and processes within the sector from the start of their careers, an impact that will grow over time. Importantly, this CDT is producing graduates in a highly skilled sector of the economy, leading to jobs that are £50,000 more productive per employee than average (i.e. more GVA). These graduates are in demand, as there are a lack of highly skilled engineers to undertake specialist automotive propulsion research and fill the estimated 5,000 job vacancies in the UK due to these skills shortages. Ultimately, the CDT will create a highly specialised and productive talent pipeline for the UK economy.

The route to impact through cultural change is perhaps of even more significance in the long term. Our cohort will be highly diverse, an outcome driven by our wide catchment in terms of academic background, giving them a 'diversity edge'. The cultural change that is enabled by this powerful cohort will have a profound impact, facilitating a move away from 'business as usual'.

The research outputs of the CDT will have impact in two important fields - the products produced and processes used within the indsutry. The academic team leading and operating this CDT have a long track record of generating impact through the application of their research outputs to industrially relevant problems. This understanding is embodied in the design of our CDT and has already begun in the definition of the training programmes and research themes that will meet the future needs of our industry and international partners. Exchange of people is the surest way to achieve lasting and deep exchange of expertise and ideas. The students will undertake placements at the collaborating companies and will lead to employment of the graduates in partner companies.

The CDT is an integral part of the IAAPS initiative. The IAAPS Business Case highlights the need to develop and train suitably skilled and qualified engineers in order to achieve, over the first five years of IAAPS' operations, an additional £70 million research and innovation expenditure, creating an additional turnover of £800 million for the automotive sector, £221 million in GVA and 1,900 new highly productive jobs.

The CDT is designed to deliver transformational impact for our industrial partners and the automotive sector in general. The impact is wider than this, since the products and services that our partners produce have a fundamental part to play in the way we organise our lives in a modern society. The impact on the developing world is even more profound. The rush to mobility across the developing world, the increasing spending power of a growing global middle class, the move to more urban living and the increasingly urgent threat of climate change combine to make the impact of the work we do directly relevant to more people than ever before. This CDT can help change the world by effecting the change that needs to happen in our industry.