Assistance program
Autonomous Vehicle Research in Rural Communities Program
$25.0 Million committed in FY2026–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of the Secretary, Transportation, Department of
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 20.944
- What it does
- The Autonomous Vehicle Research in Rural Communities Program, also known as the Rural Autonomous Vehicle (RAV) Research Cooperative Agreement or RAV Program will award funding to eligible accredited nonprofit institutions of higher education to conduct research and work with rural communities to address the additional challenges, including weather variables and differing types of roadway, of bringing the benefits of autonomous vehicles, including freight and delivery vehicles, to rural Americans. Proposal submission is closed and selection process is complete. Award is in pending status,
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- Eligible applicants must be accredited private and public non-profit institutions of higher education, including qualifying and two-year institutions established and located physically in the United States or its territories or on Tribal lands. Each Eligible Entity is required to obtain matching funds from non-Federal sources, in an amount of 50 percent of the USDOT award amount. The USDOT funds for the cooperative agreement may be expended up to 2029, and selected entities will have until that date to meet the full match requirement by obtaining and expending those funds.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments