ERTICO’s projects had a strong presence at the 2023 Conference on Results from Road Transport Research (RTR), which took place in Brussels last week on 14-16 February. The event is co-organised by ERTRAC, the 2Zero Partnership, the CCAM Partnership and the European Commission and gives prominence to the results, impacts and next steps of Horizon2020 EU-funded projects in road transport for the past six years.
The 2023 edition of the RTR Conference focused once again on essential areas for road transport. The themes that were explored this year include: Green Vehicles, Urban Mobility, Logistics, Intelligent Transport Systems, Safety, Automated Road Transport. Over 3 days and 16 sessions, the conference brought together 61 EU-funded projects showcasing the state of the European research scene in these fields and how they drive positive change and benefits to the European society, environment, and economy.
On the second day of the conference, Andrew Winder, MODALES Project Coordinator and Senior Manager of Innovation & Deployment at ERTICO, presented the project’s latest developments and results so far, during the parallel session “Air quality: from technology to user involvement”. MODALES aims to reduce air pollution from road vehicles by encouraging the adoption of low-emission driving behaviour and proper vehicle maintenance. To achieve this, the project has developed an app and training videos for low-emission driving, which have been tested by drivers in real conditions in the project’s trial sites.
On Wednesday 15 February, Christina Anagnostopoulou (ICCS) presented the user-centric technologies and solutions developed as part of the eCharge4Drivers project, which aims to improve the charging experience of users of electric vehicles. Among the solutions that the project is demonstrating are scalable charging stations, charging points on lamp posts, and battery swapping stations. The Project Manager, Evangelos Karfopoulos (ICCS), moderated this session entitled “AGV – EV charging solutions: get the users on board”.
Dr. Yancho Todorov (VTT), STORM Project Coordinator, also took part in a parallel session that day on “Freight transport: from new methodologies to innovative solutions”, where he presented three use cases developed in the project. The first discussed a methodology to design EU level charging network for heavy-duty trucks evaluating the power needs in different countries to empower future zero-emission battery electric vehicles, in order to keep the same freight flows as with diesel trucks. The second focused on inner city logistics with zero-emission vehicles with insights from Finland and the Czech Republic focusing on the implications to future logistics scenarios from various urban settings. The third case, which is in early development phase, deals with the development of new agent-based policies assessment tools, supporting the evaluation of enabling technologies on the future policies.
Furthermore, FAME project’s representatives were there to announce the 4th European Conference on Connected and Automated Driving (EUCAD2023), which will take place in Brussels on 3 and 4 May 2023. This event is organised in collaboration with the European Commission and the European Partnership on Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM) and will be an opportunity for political leaders and high-level representative industry, academia and road authorities to discuss if our societies are ready for the deployment of smart, inclusive and sustainable mobility solutions.
