This action shall provide a positive contribution to the European Research Area, as well as to the European strategies for future transport systems and the EU’s collaboration in R&I with international partners. In addition, this initiative will support climate action and air quality improvement in line with the Green Deals targets and objectives, Vision Zero for road safety, contribute to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals as well as the EU’s digital strategy.

In line with these objectives, all the following aspects will need to be addressed:

• Widen and increase the European future road transport R&I environment by providing an enlarged, more innovative and more representative number of interested stakeholders that could currently be less represented in existing European platforms, networks and associations (both geographically and thematically);
• Identification of actions to support the road transport R&I area, e.g. identify state of the art, future and innovative requirements, potential technical developments and white spots, and potential precompetitive activities;
• Identification of in-depth state of the art and barriers for the deployment of EU research results at European and international level, co-development of options to overcome them, including development of innovation plans and analysis of competitiveness issues to support the alignment of European stakeholders in the following specific areas: “Urban zero-emission mobility”, “Improved air quality”, “Future road safety ”, “Zero-emission long-haul logistics” and “Digitalisation of road transport” (including all relevant aspects related to Artificial Intelligence, big data and Software Defined Vehicles);
• Assess the current road transport related research infrastructures (RI) in Europe and, based on this, analyse and identify needs towards a strategy for the establishment of a research infrastructure (RI) ecosystems in the Road Transport sector that addresses EU priorities and strategic autonomy together with the EU’s capacity for excellent research;
• To foster innovation aspects of road transport R&I, at least 4 specific events or workshops will be organised to present, discuss and disseminate the analysed technology needs, trends and results of the above points. In addition, direct support (such as financial, organisational, communication and dissemination) is expected to the annual Road Transport Research Conferences co-organised by the European Commission, ERTRAC, and the 2Zero, CCAM and BATT4EU Partnerships;
• Support the identification and scaling up of activities at an EU level in the fields of education, training and skilling/reskilling and standardisation;
• In the field of international cooperation in line with the UN SDGs and to support the European industrial competitiveness for the future road transport sector:
  • Following-up the previous EU-US transport research symposia (co-organised by the European Commission) in the specific sectors of “Decarbonisation” and “Digitalisation”, provide a deep analysis of the implementation and evaluation of EU research funded projects and activities to support the alignment with the US (mainly under the DoE and DoT programmes) on technological, societal, systemic and spatial dimensions of R&I in road transport.
  • Analyse EU research funded projects and activities related to electromobility in urban areas in emerging economies (specifically in Africa, Asia and Latin America) and support further dissemination and replication of implemented solutions in other regions via specific workshops and events, mainly online. This shall also facilitate the exchange of information of EU actors and projects with key international cooperation programmes such as the Global Gateway and the UN Global Environment Facility (GEF).