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This position paper, published in December 2023 by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), addresses the European Commission's Proposal for a Regulation on circularity requirements for vehicle design and the management of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). 

The paper emphasizes the need for a harmonised legal framework across EU member states to reduce operating costs and deliver environmental benefits. It also highlights the importance of clarity, consistency, and a progressive approach aligned with technological advancements. Key topics include minimum recycled content targets, extended producer responsibility, circularity strategy, mandatory dismantling, and new type-approval requirements.

The introduction of active safety systems and advanced driver assistance systems has enhanced the control authority over the vehicle dynamics through specialized actuators, enabling, for instance, independent wheel torque control. During emergency situations, these systems step in to aid the driver by limiting vehicle response to a stable and controllable range of low longitudinal tire slips and slip angles. This approach makes vehicle behavior predictable and manageable for the average human driver; however, it is conservative in case of driving automation. In fact, past research has shown that exceeding the operational boundaries of conventional active safety systems enables trajectories that are otherwise unattainable. 

This paper presents a nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) for path tracking (PT), which integrates steering, front-to-total longitudinal tire force distribution, and direct yaw moment actuation, and can operate beyond the limit of handling, e.g., to induce drift, if this is beneficial to PT. Simulation results of emergency conditions in an intersection scenario highlight that the proposed solution provides significant safety improvements, when compared to the concurrent operation of PT algorithms and the current generation of vehicle stability controllers.

This study provides an up-to-date expert assessment and comparison between the life cycle’s carbon footprint of battery electric and internal combustion engine passenger cars. It presents evidence from the literature and from life cycle assessment modelling and concludes with policy recommendations. The analysis includes sensitivities, regional variations for six Member States, and also the effects of technical and legislative development on the potential outlook up to 2050.

This report evaluates an Integrated Motor Drive (IMD) developed for electric trucks, with the aim of reducing environmental impacts and improving the circular use of materials. The IMD consists of four main components: inverter, electric motor, gearbox, and heatsink. The study focuses on how design improvements, repairability, reuse, remanufacturing, and new business models can improve sustainability over the full product life cycle. A life cycle assessment with a cradle-to-grave scope was carried out for 3 million kilometers of truck operation. The improved modular design enables easier repair, extends the IMD lifetime and reduces the number of units required while lowering the material demand. Three end-of-life scenarios were assessed. The baseline scenario reflects current practice and delivers limited benefits. Improved remanufacturing in the second sce-nario leads to clear gains in circularity and resource efficiency. The strongest results are achieved with an advanced circular business model scenario based on a leasing model, where the manufacturer retains ownership of the IMD. This approach enables high return rates, extensive reuse, and effective remanufacturing. Environmental results show that circular strategies mainly reduce impacts related to resource use and critical raw materials, while climate change impacts are dominated by electricity consumption during use. Reuse and remanufacturing are especially important for reducing dependence on critical materials such as neodymium used in motor magnets. The study concludes that combining efficient design, improved repairability, and suitable business models can significantly enhance the environmental and resource performance of electric truck powertrains.

The European Automotive Research Partners Association (EARPA) brings together the most prominent independent European R&D providers in the automotive sector. EARPA helps enable organisations to actively contribute to the European Research Area and the future EU research and technological development funding programmes. 

EARPA currently has 61 members ranging from large and small commercial organisations to national institutes and universities. EARPA is independent from any external body or institute and is only funded by its members’ fees and is governed by an Executive Board and a General Assembly. We work close cooperation with the automotive industry, the automotive suppliers, as well as the European Institutions and the EU Member States.

The automotive industry is amidst an unprecedented multi-faceted transition striving for more sustainable passenger mobility and freight transportation. The rise of e-mobility is coming along with energy efficiency improvements, greenhouse gas and non-exhaust emission reductions, driving/propulsion technology innovations, and a hardware-software-ratio shift in vehicle development for road-based electric vehicles. Current R&D activities are focusing on electric motor topologies and designs, sustainability, manufacturing, prototyping, and testing. This is leading to a new generation of electric motors, which is considering recyclability, reduction of (rare earth) resource usage, cost criticality, and a full product life-cycle assessment, to gain broader market penetration. This paper outlines the latest advances of multiple EU-funded research projects under the Horizon Europe framework and showcases their complementarities to address the European priorities as identified in the 2Zero SRIA. Target of this paper is to introduce a family of European projects (EM-TECH, HEFT, MAXIMA, VOLTCAR and CliMAFlux), all following the target of high efficiency and low-cost electric motors for circularity and low use of rare resources. Especially, this paper will describe the latest advances of the respective projects as well as their complementarity to address the 2Zero strategy.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of European research and innovation in support of zero-emission heavy-duty road transport. The report analyses 153 projects, 151 of them funded under FP7, Horizon 2020, and Horizon Europe, and two from the European Investment Bank. The analysed projects cover a wide range of topics from battery chemistry to deployment and operations of the zero-emission vehicles. The report showcases the significant advancements in developing and demonstrating the technologies, standards, and best practices, and identifies the challenges and opportunities for future research and innovation. The report contributes thus to European transport and research and innovation policy discussions on zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles and infrastructure development

Because of the importance of the role of Road Transport in Europe, an accelerated development of sustainable, integrated transport solutions is necessary. The mission of ERTRAC is to provide a framework to focus the coordinated efforts of public and private resources on the necessary research activities.

Gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductors can improve the power converters used in electric vehicles. These devices offer significant advantages due to their ability to operate at high switching frequencies while maintaining high efficiency. This paper presents a comprehensive comparison of modulation techniques for hybrid T-type converters that use SiC and GaN semiconductors. The analysis compares modified sinusoidal pulse-width modulation (M-SPWM), double-signal pulse-width modulation (DSPWM), and carrier-based pulse-width modulation (CB-PWM) techniques in terms of efficiency and DC bus balancing capabilities. The study examines the normalized voltage ripple and losses on the DC bus utilizing MATLAB/Simulink and PLECS. The simulation results indicate that DSPWM and CB-PWM hold promise as viable alternatives to the traditional M-SPWM technique for electric mobility applications, particularly when the power converter operates at high switching frequencies.