On May 9, ERTICO organised a European Parliamentary breakfast meeting to give MEPs an insight into the perspectives of automated mobility applied to freight road transport. The European ITS stakeholder community came together at the European Parliament to present the Truck Platooning Challenge.
Truck Platooning presents a unique opportunity for the efficient transport of tomorrow. The progress of digital technologies of cooperative and automated vehicles is opening new perspectives for freight road transport. Truck platooning is fast emerging as an answer to many major challenges of long distance road freight transport: driver efficiency improvement and cost reduction, emission/decarbonisation, logistics chain improvement, road safety and infrastructure capacity.
There remain, however, some issues that require further investigation: user acceptance, impact on traffic and infrastructure, operation and business models. Full implementation requires action from all stakeholders, technologies providers, OEMs, roads operators, designers and construction companies, as well as regulators and public authorities.
To make this message heard, members of the European Parliament were given an insight into automated mobility applied to freight road transport at a breakfast meeting. The one-hour breakfast meeting was attended by was attended by several MEPs and representations from ACEA, CEDR, CLEPA, EREG, ERTICO, EuroShippercouncil, IFFSTAR, IRU and RWS.
Erik Jonnaert, ACEA Secretary General, presented the perspective of the automotive authorities in outlining the advantages of Truck Platooning. While presenting a roadmap for implementation, Mr. Jonnaert said that “to bring truck platooning to Europe’s roads in the near future, we will need to build on the political momentum of the Declaration of Amsterdam and implement what we have learnt from the European Truck Platooning Challenge in 2016.”
You can read his complete presentation here.
