environment magazine

The European Green Cars Initiative: a public-private partnership for energy efficient road vehicles

By Prof. Wolfgang Steiger, Chairman, European Green Cars Initiative

The European Green Cars Initiative is a public-private partnership (PPP) launched at the end of 2008 in the context of the European Economic Recovery Plan set up by the European Commission. The objective of this partnership is to support R&D on technologies that are essential for achieving breakthroughs in the energy efficiency of road vehicles.

A major pillar of the initiative is the electrification: the program funds projects in the areas of energy storage systems, drive train technologies, system integration, grid integration, and transport system integration. Despite its name, the Green Cars Initiative is not only covering passenger cars: also technology research on powertrains and vehicles, for vans, buses and trucks, is included, for both city and long distance transport. And beside the major pillar of electrification there are also opportunities for projects on the implementation of alternative fuels, such as CNG. The other pillars of the program are trucks and logistics, in which vehicle optimization and adaptation to missions is a major topic to reach more efficient road transportation.

In total, the PPP European Green Cars Initiative makes available a total of one billion Euro for R&D through joint funding programmes of the European Commission and the industry, in the period 2009-2013. This R&D funding is complemented by loans available at the European Investment Bank under two mechanisms: the Risk-Sharing Finance Facility (RSFF) and the European Clean Transport Facility (ECTF), a loan instrument which has been specifically designed for lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the transport industry. Until now, more than 8 billion Euro of loans have been approved for the automotive sector. Concerning the R&D projects, the first round of calls was launched in July 2009, and since then more than 50 projects are under way. For more information, the website www.green-cars-initiative.eu is providing all the necessary details.

The electrification of road vehicles has received particular attention in this PPP considering the high potential of electrified mobility for energy efficiency, climate protection and decarbonization, resources management, and air quality. Within this pillar of electrification is included the development of full electric vehicles, the various possible architectures of hybrids, and vehicles equipped with range extenders. The electrification represents a great potential to be seized by Europe’s automotive and energy industries, requiring coordinated efforts of these sectors, in partnership with public authorities. Turning such innovative vehicles into viable products ready for mass markets requires significant technological innovations addressing a series of major challenges, including: affordable, safe and high-performance energy storage, vehicle-to-grid interfaces, thermal management, advanced drive-train control, robustness and safety as well as the seamless integration into the transport system. Together with these technological innovations, the future generations of vehicles require effort in terms of components standardization, sub-systems modularization, and new manufacturing requirements: costs reduction and ability to respond to demands variations will be the key driving forces towards success in mass markets uptake.

In this respect, the PPP European Green Cars Initiative, together with another PPP of the European Commission, “Factories of the Future”, have interesting interactions to develop, in particular for integrated product-process approaches and new materials aspects, with the objective of sustainable high performance manufacturing of the next generation of vehicles. Underlining the legitimacy of public-private partnerships for this matter, the electrification of road transport requires in addition careful demand-side measures and timely regulatory frameworks, for which a shared knowledge of the expectations and the challenges are of high value. In partnership with industry, the European Commission and EU Members States have with such measures key policy tools able to act as leverage effect towards the mass market uptake.

While this electrification of passenger cars and delivery vehicles is predicted to increase over the next decade and to be implemented progressively in our cities, the powertrains of heavy-duty vehicles necessary for long distance transport are expected to remain based on the internal combustion engine. Although the powertrains of the commercial vehicles are already very optimized towards fuel efficiency, the predicted increase in goods transport demand requests that new technologies are investigated in order to compensate the overall increase of fuel consumption and its effect on the carbon footprint of freight transport. These efforts towards more energy efficient trucks must cover three main areas of R&D: vehicle efficiency, driveline efficiency, and driver efficiency. And such as for electrification, timely developments are also necessary in terms of demonstrations, production, market introduction, and regulatory frameworks. At the same time, CO2 emissions from freight transport can be further reduced through measures to optimize the use patterns of vehicles and the logistics schemes in general.

Indeed, an optimized use of transport resources and infrastructures has the capacity to optimize the performances of the transport system as a whole, bringing more efficiency in the view of traffic fluidity, of transport services reliability, of safety and security, of cost reduction, and of utmost importance a reduced carbon footprint. An important opportunity for the European industry is therefore represented by the development of integrated services and business models complementing transport modes and building cooperation between the actors of the logistics chains. In close link with the R&D performed on commercial vehicles, research and innovation is needed on this pillar in order to achieve efficient door-to-door logistics, with goods being shipped seamlessly across modes and networks thanks to ICT solutions, to cooperative business practices, to co-modal transfer hubs, and to an extended standardization of freight carriers in terms of dimensions and modularization. Here as well the regulatory framework will be of high importance to support the deployment of innovative solutions.

By addressing the challenges of cleaner vehicles and more efficient mobility within these strategic pillars, the European Green Cars Initiative PPP targets energy efficiency gains in the whole transport system. The changes in transport that will occur in the coming decades will be societal changes. The energies used in transport will evolve, in particular through progressive electrification. The vehicle designs will multiply, with new ones adapted to the new powertrains. New mobility services will be developed, integrating these different energies and vehicle types according to specific transportation needs. Also the integration of networks, between private and public transport, or between transport modes e.g. road and rail, should take place and bring to an end today’s fragmentation, which holds back the efficiency and the reliability of transportation from a user point of view. An efficient and affordable transport system is fundamental for Europe’s economy. With the developments of new vehicle concepts and powertrains, the automotive industry, with the multiple actors of its supply chain, and with its influence on many raw material industries, will need important modifications, implying impacts on employment and changes on the skills required. This scenario is played moreover on an international perspective, where European actors have to position themselves globally, anticipating demands both within Europe and across the world. The role of research and innovation is therefore very important to bring efficiency to the transport system, to deliver solutions for tomorrow’s mobility, but also to ensure a brighter future for Europe’s economy. A programme of European dimensions such as the European Green Cars Initiative public-private partnership is definitely a good example of actions to take in order to build this future.