The rapid advancement of autonomous vehicle technology promises enhanced efficiency and safety in transportation. However, operational constraints within Operational Design Domains (ODDs), including issues in sensing, behaviour prediction, and reliability, limit the potential of automated vehicles. Expanding the ODD framework is critical to enable these vehicles to navigate challenging scenarios like construction zones, unmarked roads, and adverse weather conditions. This expansion involves robust perception and decision-making algorithms, reducing the need for human intervention and facilitating integration with human-driven vehicles. While the benefits are substantial, challenges like data collection, sensor technology, and regulatory frameworks must be addressed through interdisciplinary collaboration. The iEXODDUS project is at the forefront of advancing digital technologies and navigation services, aligning with goals for increased safety, security, and sustainability in the mobility sector, ultimately paving the way for safer and more reliable automated transportation. iEXODDUS shall meticulously assess existing ODDs to unveil limitations and areas for improvement, fostering a deep understanding of ODD challenges and opportunities. This analysis serves as the foundation for a framework to assess and categorize ODDs across diverse automated driving scenarios. A key focus area is the enhancement of sensor technologies and perception capabilities through cutting-edge data fusion methods, expanding ODDs beyond current limits while considering environmental factors like weather conditions and road infrastructure. iEXODDUS envisions autonomous vehicles travelling across Europe, resolving harmonization and legal issues, and making policy recommendations. Collaboration with industry stakeholders and aiming for real-world demonstrations will enable an industry-tailored approach towards automated driving systems with extended ODDs.

The HAL4SDV proposal aligns with the EU Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2022 on Electronic Components and Systems. It aims to pioneer methods, technologies, and processes for series vehicle development beyond 2030, driven by anticipated advancements in microelectronics, communication technology, software engineering, and AI. HAL4SDV envisions a future where vehicles are fully integrated into smart cities, intelligent highways, and cyberspace, blurring the lines between inside and outside the vehicle. Assumptions include data-centricity, code portability, efficient data fusion, unlimited scalability, real-time capabilities, and robust cybersecurity. The objectives encompass unifying software interfaces, creating a hardware abstraction framework, enabling Over-The-Air (OTA) updates, designing platform architectures, ensuring hardware abstraction and virtualization, offering hardware support, automating integration, supporting safety features, harnessing edge computing, implementing security measures, and providing essential development tools. By focusing on these objectives, HAL4SDV aims to establish a unified ecosystem for software-defined vehicles, positioning Europe's automotive industry for continued leadership post-2030 while leveraging existing results and technologies to accelerate progress.

MOSAIC addresses a grand challenge for European competitiveness: technological independence and filled fabs in the landscape of automated systems. By fostering innovation in Electronic Components and Systems (ECS), MOSAIC aims to propel Europe to excellence and digital autonomy, directly linked to the EU Chips Act. The project achieves this through a comprehensive strategy. It will develop next-generation ECS offering superior, cognitive system intelligence, enabling energy efficiency and robustness. These results will be tailored to the demands of automated systems, enabling rapid data processing and intuitive, AI-enabled decision- making. MOSAIC tackles the challenge of integrating diverse perception hardware configurations, ensuring that automated systems can perceive their surroundings in a non-invasive manner, avoiding a single point of failure, with unparalleled accuracy and decreased complexity. Additionally, the project emphasizes standardized communication protocols and interoperability, fostering a collaborative ecosystem across several industries, namely automotive, aerospace, maritime, industrial automation and infrastructures. By spearheading such advancements, MOSAIC empowers European ECS manufacturers to gain a competitive advantage. The project's achievements will be demonstrated in 31 cutting-edge technical showcases, indicatively global perception through 360° distributed radar, AI-enabled reasoning through magnetic field signature and resilient communications by means of non-terrestrial networks. 2 accompanying impact studies, will solidify Europe's position as a global leader in automated systems. MOSAIC leverages a pan-European consortium encompassing the entire ECS value chain, ensuring a comprehensive effort towards filling the European fabs and ensuring digital sovereignty. In essence, MOSAIC is an investment in Europe's future – a secure digital future of technological leadership, economic prosperity, and strategic independence.

Long-haul BEVs and FCEVs need to become more affordable and reliable, more energy efficient, with a longer range per single charge, and a reduced charging time to meet the user’s needs. Next to those, there is a real need to take zero-emission long-haul goods transport in Europe to the next level by executing real-world demonstrations of BEVs and FCEVs spread all over Europe; this also requires that technology soon can deliver on promised benefits (easy handling, similar driving hours & charging/fueling, and high speeds, and ability to operate in complex transport supply chains); flexible and abundant charging points for the rising number of vehicles must be implemented fast and to support this, novel charging concepts are needed. In addition, as multiple needs in the logistics chain exist, require novel tools for fleet managers providing them with better information on ZEV in logistic operation, providing a twin of the real use thereby giving valuable information regarding predictive maintenance, eco-driving etc., providing information on better logistics planning, the (available) charging and refuelling along the route, access to roads and traffic information. ZEFES major outcomes: Executing of real-world demonstrations of long-haul BEVs and FCEVs across Europe to take zero-emission long-haul goods transport in Europe to the next level. Pathway for long-haul BEVs and FCEVs to become more affordable and reliable, more energy efficient, with a longer range per single charge and reduced charging times able to meet the user’s needs. Technologies which can deliver promised benefits (easy handling, similar driving hours & charging/fueling, high speeds and ability to operate in complex transport supply chains). Mapping of flexible and abundant charging/fueling points and novel charging concepts. Novel tools for fleet management to support the rising number of long-haul BEVs and FCEVs vehicles in the logistics supply chains.

In this project, leading European universities, research centers, and companies within the battery supply chain are bringing their expertise and innovations together to create the next-generation BMS platform able to overcome critical challenges limiting the performance of the existing solutions. iBattMan will incorporate novel sensors and methodologies for monitoring the State-of-Health (SOH) of the cells during operation and in charging, together with cutting-edge technologies and tools for V2X and second-life applications, and use advanced physics- and data-based models implemented on-board and on-cloud for performance evaluation, diagnosis, health management and safety evaluation tools, to trigger actions to address safety and cyber-security concerns. This will result in an innovative, modular and scalable BMS, for a wide range of vehicles, from small passenger cars to e-buses and electric trucks, with improved performance, connectivity, security and reliability to enhance battery performance and reduce total cost of ownership in EV applications and intelligent battery use for grid support and in 2nd life applications, based on a holistic design of an interoperable architecture and supported by a suite of advanced sensors and edge- and cloud-computational resources. This will represent an outstanding step forward in the EU battery development roadmap and enable accelerated market adoption of smart batteries to bring to market world-leading class Li-ion technologies to improve the cost-effectiveness, circularity, and sustainability of the EU battery industry by 2030-2035. It will support the integration of more renewables on the grid based on new concepts such as Smart Cities and Net Zero Buildings to benefit EV car manufacturers and complementary markets like urban mobility, 2nd life application for stationary storage, batteries, and battery recycling.