INEA has signed grant agreements with 29 new projects selected for funding under the 2018 two-stage Mobility for Growth calls. They will receive a total of approximately €166 million.

The successful projects will demonstrate innovative solutions towards low-carbon and sustainable transport. They will also contribute significantly to safe and resilient transport systems, and to increasing the competitiveness of the European transport sector overall.

All of the projects will start their activities by the end of the year.

Project examples

Green Vehicle Index Project

The overall aim of the Green Vehicle Index project is to orient the consumer towards the most energy efficient low polluting vehicle by providing understandable information.

The Green Vehicle Index (GVI) Project will provide a scoring methodology to complement pass-fail information and independently assess the full environmental performance of a vehicle in the most comprehensive manner. Most importantly, this will enable consumers to make purchases based on environmental considerations in an easy and objective fashion. At the same time, transparency will be maximised by making detailed test results available to experts and consumers. This is of paramount importance, helping to address concerns raised on the regulatory side, as well as on data made available by the industry.

The GVI project was initiated by the Euro NCAP Technical Working Group to develop an approach (similar to safety) towards an environmental “Green NCAP” rating. The Green NCAP pilot program started in 2017 by defining a draft set of test protocols, a draft rating methodology and draft roadmap, validated by testing 12 vehicles. The GVI project builds on this approach and is considered as the essential step towards a fully-fledged and self-sustainable Green NCAP program capable of fully informing consumers on all aspects of the environmental performance of new vehicles.

Project title: Green Vehicle Index Project

Duration: 18 months

Budget: €2 999 178 million

EC funding: €2 999 178 million

Project Coordinator: IDIADA (Spain)

Mediating between Driver and Intelligent Automated Transport systems on our Roads

Mediator is a project focusing on human factors as a main cause of accidents in a mixed automation road environment. The specificity of the project consists in the proposal of an intelligent ‘mediating’ support system for road transport, enabling safe, real-time switching between human driver and system. It aims at constantly evaluating driving context, driver state and vehicle automation status, personalising its technology to the driver’s general competence.

The project has a budget of 6.5 M€ for 12 partners. Reviewers have stated that MEDIATOR proposes a pioneering research for a number of areas, such as the use of artificial intelligence in real-life examination of human factors and a support tool for the assessment of driver's fitness in relation to the driving context.

Project title: Mediator

Duration: 48 months

Budget: €6 461 615 million

EC funding: €6 461 615 million

Project Coordinator: SWOV (The Netherlands)

Autonomous Shipping Initiative for European Waters

AUTOSHIP will build and operate 2 remote and autonomous vessels and their needed shore control and operation infrastructure, reaching and going over TRL7. Testing will take place during two pilot demonstration campaigns addressing goods mobility from the Baltic Corridor to a major EU seaport and hinterland, which are most relevant areas with growing waterborne transport market demand in EU.

Doing so, it will speed-up the Next Generation of Autonomous Ships, by demonstrating autonomous vessels in real environment Short Sea Shipping and Inland Water Ways. The technology package will include full-autonomous navigation, self-diagnostic, prognostics and operation scheduling, as well as communication technology enabling a prominent level of cyber security and integrating the vessels into upgraded e-infrastructure. In parallel, digital tools and methodologies for design, simulation and cost analysis will be developed for the whole community of autonomous ships.

AUTOSHIP will help ship operators/owners to improve the economy of scale of their investments, to effectively gain competitiveness and renew their fleets, making them more competitive to replace road transport.

Project title: Autoship

Duration: 42 months

Budget: €27 679 830 million

EC funding: €20 109 109 million