Project results are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

• Accelerated uptake of Heavy Duty (HD) Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) across the EU and Associated Countries, through innovative logistics models, addressing the need to optimise battery size and charging strategies across various logistics scenarios;
• Enhanced reliability and effectivity of the road freight systems enabled by the development and implementation of software tools for decision making considering truck configurations, charging strategies, missions and efficient operational planning of routes and services, including charging and interoperable cross-border services;
• Increased portfolio of real-life HD-BEV operational demonstrations for long-haul and cross border operations and associated logistics models;
• Enhanced understanding of EU and Associated Countries stakeholders’ needs for integrating HD-BEVs in logistics operations, also long-term novel usage models.

Scope:

It is expected that by 2030 there will be around half a million of HD-BEV on European roads. Nonetheless, the current market application of these vehicles is largely confined to transport tasks with restricted range and considerable repetition. To expand their use, diverse strategies and applications must be explored and validated for scalability based on real data coming from logistics operators. The development of new application models should showcase the potential flexibility of HD-BEVs and assist end-users in establishing innovative usage frameworks and models.

Several actions are already underway for HD-BEV logistics (including the projects funded under the 2Zero topics HORIZON-CL5-2022-D5-01-08 and HORIZON-CL5-2024-D5-01-04) with a focus on extending range and charging capacity but also identifying challenges, gaps and impacts of HD-BEV usage in logistics operation. There is an urgent need to address these challenges and gaps for a smooth transition into daily operations and considering the wide variety of use cases and missions to be addressed.

Finding the optimal balance between the vehicle’s configuration and available charging infrastructure for different logistics use cases is key to address the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) challenge in the short and long term. This balancing will be enhanced by innovative logistics models and tools to further optimise logistics regional and long-haul operations in different regions in the EU and Associated Countries accelerating the deployment of HD BEVs for logistics.

Proposals are expected to address all the following aspects:

• Derive in-depth insights and lessons learnt from current long-haul transport missions in the EU and Associated Countries along major road arteries (e. g. the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) corridors and nodes) towards overcoming the limitations determined by vehicle range and TCO and propose cost-effective HD BEV based logistics and operational models, building on modular vehicles set up and sound charging strategies. These models should include use cases across the EU and Associated Countries focused on long-haul transport missions and be based on existing, real operations data;
• Test and validate in real demonstrations new logistic operational concepts and models allowing a scalable deployment of HD-BEV in long haul transport missions optimising the different variabilities of a shipment (range, charging time, various European regions, drivers required break/rest times etc.).
• Develop and test associated digital tools for effective, robust integration in the overall logistics operations and fleets, and facilitating interoperable cross-border services. These associated digital tools – where relevant also developed as digital twins – are to enable and support efficient optimisation of the concepts, models, solutions and operations;
• Real-life demonstrations should be based on existing fleets of operators (e.g. haulers, shippers, freight forwarders) with different categories of vehicles and missions. Demonstration should at least include 8 different types of long-haul missions in different climatic conditions, including cross-border missions, and involve several logistic companies and/or logistic users;
• Develop scenarios for optimum balance of vehicles’ performance and configuration, charging strategies and solutions. The scenarios will include information on the distance dependency as a function of vehicle combinations, location and capacity of charging stations and payload demands;
• The demonstrated concepts, models and tools should allow strategies for firm upscaling of HD-BEV implementation, taking into account the logistics operational models, the performance of complete vehicle combinations also considering the effects of on-board batteries on the ageing and energy recuperation;

The project(s) should take account Open Science, its practices and learning, and the project’s results will be enacted in line with FAIR principles for data^[1].

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Towards zero emission road transport’ (2ZERO). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership ‘Towards zero emission road transport’ (2ZERO) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

[1] Final Report and Action Plan from the European Commission Expert Group on FAIR Data, “TURNING FAIR INTO REALITY” - https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/7769a148-f1f6-11e8-9982-01aa75ed71a1/language-en