The AKKA Group has announced the achievement of a key milestone in its Flexmove project, the multimodal mobility service launched in January 2020. The project has at its core an electric vehicle that can be driven like a normal car on the road, but which can also move on rail tracks thanks to a special tyre-to-tracks technology.

A significant number of AKKA’s top automotive and rail experts are working on the Flexmove project and have validated the technical feasibility of the road-rail system for which several patents have been filed, notably for the revolutionary multi-support guidance system adaptable to all types of passenger vehicles or vans.

The relevance of this project in addressing societal and environmental issues as well as the profitability of its economic model have attracted the interest of initial investors grouped in the Société d’Ingénierié, de Construction et d’Exploitation de la Ferromobile (SICEF). SICEF was founded by a group of mobility enthusiasts alongside AKKA Technologies, firmly convinced of the relevance of the Flexmove system.

Under the memorandum of understanding for the creation of SICEF, the parties have agreed that AKKA would transfer the project concept and technology, valued at several tens of millions of euros, to SICEF.

“We are delighted with this new step in the Flexmove project, which proves that AKKA’s decision to allocate its talents to disruptive in-house R&D projects is value-creating. This project has enabled a large number of our engineers to develop their skills in key areas of expertise for the Group’s goal of diversifying, such as signalling and railway safety. I am convinced that SICEF will enable us to accelerate the development and implementation of Flexmove, while AKKA remains the exclusive engineering company of the project” – said Mauro Ricci, Chairman and CEO of AKKA Technologies.

It illustrates the mission of AKKA Research: to stimulate industrial innovation for AKKA’s clients, by offering them disruptive projects that will enable them to remain at the cutting edge of new technologies. This project fits coherently into the innovation portfolio of AKKA Research, whose projects focus in particular on electric mobility and decarbonization of the environment by rethinking the footprint of existing infrastructures through the contribution of new technologies.

Watch a video about FLEXMOVE here.

Original source: AKKA Technologies