The future of mobility is Connected, Cooperative & Automated
ERTICO is working to support and accelerate the deployment of safe, infrastructure supported and inclusive CCAM services that complement existing transport solutions and address societal needs.
Our activities reflect the entire spectrum of ERTICO’s CCAM roadmap vision, bringing together multiple stakeholders from all sectors including industry, research and the public to share experiences and build consensus to solve common challenges. This includes addressing the societal aspects of CCAM, exploring and testing the key enabling technologies, supporting demonstrations to raise awareness and evaluate wider impacts of services, providing co-ordination across stakeholders, creating the physical and digital infrastructure required, and developing and aligning the standards and harmonised approaches necessary for deployment to succeed.
We strongly support the CCAM Partnership, which organises the R&I actions required to move closer towards deployment readiness. This includes significant contributions to developing and updating the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), a living document that informs European R&I and demonstration activity, alongside developments associated with the Work Programmes of the Horizon Europe funding programme. ERTICO leads the partnership’s cluster on Coordination and co-leads its cluster on Integrating CCAM in the Transport System.
Recent updates to the SRIA reflect the latest technological advances, including results from the first EU-funded CCAM project, together with emerging challenges and evolving societal needs. They also reflect fast-moving regulatory developments connected to the General Safety Regulation (GSR) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) Regulation to fully support the EU Green Deal, but also sustainability and circularity requirements in co-operation with other initiatives around electrification and zero-emission vehicles. ERTICO has contributed to updates related to the cooperation between Member States and with other regions of the world. This is essential for future developments of harmonised solutions, working across borders, sharing best practices and potential solutions to common challenges.
The ERTICO-coordinated FAME project creates the basis for the coordination and alignment of R&I and demonstration activities on CCAM in Europe. The project maintains the EU-wide Knowledge Base for European R&I and demonstrations while developing a European Framework for testing on public roads including a Common Evaluation Methodology. This activity complements our work within the CCAM Partnership by encouraging and enabling closer collaboration, a prerequisite for successful testing and evaluation and therefore scaling-up of CCAM services.
Societal aspects including public perceptions and user acceptance will ultimately pave the way for future CCAM success. This makes co-creating CCAM solutions with citizens imperative, which requires a full understanding of what people actually want and need. ERTICO’s coordination role and knowledge sharing means we are ideally placed to support this: reaching out to non-experts, for example, and learning from CCAM experiences of cities outside Europe.
Issues around safety, reliability, security, ethics, privacy, and the sharing of personal data will all affect the willingness to trust and use CCAM services. A continued emphasis on testing, safety and standards, running large-scale demonstrations, including non-experts, and providing unambiguous information are all required. The latter was a continuous focus of the SINFONICA project, which looks at inclusiveness and equity in the adoption of CCAM.
We continue to play a central role in large-scale CCAM demonstrations, in cooperation with all stakeholders, and cities in particular. This includes the ERTICO-coordinated metaCCAZE project. Launched in 2024, metaCCAZE will be using adapted MetaInnovations and MetaServices, use cases, and collaborative business and governance models to accelerate the deployment of smart systems and services that combine electric automated and connected mobility, as well as their related infrastructure.
To ensure the availability of necessary infrastructure and seamless connectivity, we are also involved in shaping requirements and defining the building blocks, responsibilities and challenges for CCAM infrastructure. The PoDIUM project reflects these efforts, aiming to advance the Physical and Digital Infrastructure (PDI) necessary for CCAM, including a multi-connectivity approach, and an interoperable and hybrid data management environment. Connectivity is a key requirement to enable truly cooperative services.
Infrastructure support is critical, with remote management operations a key aspect of the early deployments of CCAM services. Such operations need to characterise all possible interactions between a human agent – in particular a remote operator outside the vehicle – and the automated driving system responsible for performing dynamic driving tasks.A CCAM-enabled future will require next-generation seamless traffic management. We are a partner in the IN2CCAM project, aiming to make roads safer, more sustainable and more inclusive by enhancing integration and interoperability in CCAM. Our TM2.0 innovation platform is focused on new solutions to advance interactive traffic management.
ERTICO also works to harmonise standards and regulations including testing and safety assessment methodologies. We provide dissemination and communication support for the SUNRISE project, which is developing a harmonised and scalable CCAM Safety Assurance Framework. Safety assurance is of course essential for the successful adoption and deployment of CCAM in society.
We are also involved in the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC). Recent updates to its CCAM Roadmap include the framework conditions for large-scale demonstrations, in part driven by the need for services to remain in place after demonstrations end. For example, with different enabling technologies at different levels of maturity, they must be evaluated in terms of societal impacts and potential for market adoption.
