Funding opportunities for CCAM Innovations

On 4 October, Rosalinde van der Vlies, Clean Planet Director at DG RTD – European Commission, kicked off the online workshop titled “Supporting innovations in road transport: Horizon Europe & its synergies with other EU programmes” by stressing the importance of turning innovations into (commercial) successes.

How it can be done? By supporting synergies between Horizon Europe and other EU programmes. 

Funds are greatly needed for the implementation phase. As our Chairman, Armin Graeter stated, “FOTs in Living Labs will lead to user acceptance and business cases, but after innovation is demonstrated, there is still a need for implementation”.

Many opportunities for CCAM innovation uptake fundings were identified:

• The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) ITS call, helping to reach similar services along the whole TEN-T network – access presentation 
• The Digital Europe programme to build and deploy the digital capacity. It includes, among others, Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, and the common European mobility data space – access presentation
• The European Investment Bank (EIB) to support innovations in intelligent transport systems, safe system approaches, and resilience of transport infrastructure among the target sectors – access presentation
• The European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator for start-ups and SMEs to scale up with high-impact innovations that have the potential to create new markets – access presentation
• The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Urban Mobility to demonstrate new solutions as support to cities – access presentation
• The RAPTOR challenges – the competition to create and test solutions to niche urban issues.

Armin Graeter reminded us that for CCAM to be deployed, not only funding is needed. In the past, the industry introduced big innovations in vehicle technology like seat belts or airbags as another component of the existing vehicle. After five to ten years of experience with these new technologies, technical standardisation (e.g. ISO standards) gave a thorough basis for developing regulations. Making CCAM solutions ready for deployment requires that R&I, standards and regulation advance in a synchronised way.

Alan Haigh from DG RTD closed the workshop by pointing out that synergies by design are needed to move from research results to deployment. Planning ahead on what to do next with the upcoming research results is crucial – the bigger picture must be seen by the European Commission.

The workshop was organised by the European Commission in cooperation with the CCAM Partnership and 2Zero Partnership . You can now access the replay of the online event.