The road freight transport industry is experiencing a once-in-a-century transformation, transitioning the freight transport system to zero-emission and automated solutions. Arguing for accelerated investment and automated road freight, the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC) has drafted a roadmap for competitive, sustainable, and resilient road transport. Tasked with providing a strategic vision for road transport research and innovation in Europe, ERTRAC outlines the necessary steps to support this transition and successfully address existing bottlenecks and policy gaps in the upcoming ten to fifteen years.
A shared mission
The numerous challenges, barriers, and considerations involved in creating a competitive, sustainable, and resilient transport of goods on European roads require collaboration between all European stakeholders. The mission is clear: enabling decarbonised, highly automated, connected long-distance freight transport across Europe, improving the resilience and efficiency of the continent’s freight transport market and bringing societal benefits by reducing emissions and increasing safety standards.
State of the Art
Achieving zero emissions in the logistics sector cannot be done with a one-size-fits-all solution, given the diversity around the continent in terms of energy prerequisites and availability of infrastructure and resources. To address this, ERTRAC proposes a phased approach to the decarbonisation of transport and infrastructure. Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) relying on renewable fuels can be useful options for transition phases or when more sustainable options are not available yet. Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) can be used for energy-demanding applications or locations in which the grid connection is not strong enough to support fully electric transport systems. Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are identified as long-term solutions to reach once the necessary infrastructure, and governmental incentives are in place.
The strategic roadmap for road freight transport
Looking into the roadmap, we find that the Green & Digital transitions, running in parallel, constitute the backbone for transport solutions that are seamless, environmentally sustainable, safe, and secure. Thus, the roadmap focuses on the objective of accelerating the implementation of decarbonised long-distance freight operations, as well as use cases that highlight a good cooperation between infrastructure and vehicles.
Building on the competitiveness report of Draghi and Letta’s report on the future of the EU Single Market, ERTRAC highlights the importance of balancing the tackling of the EU’s innovation gap with the decarbonisation of the industry, given the predominance of road freight in both the present and the future.
While there are no set targets for the logistics sector, frontrunners are setting goals for themselves, with three important aspects that ERTRAC wants you to keep in mind:
- Improving logistics efficiency: by using transport assets more efficiently and by introducing highly automated L4 trucks in predictable hub-to-hub operations, up to a 30% increase in efficiency and reduced strain on the vacancies in the sector could be obtained.
- Reducing emissions: integrating zero-emission vehicles into short, medium, and long-distance operations is essential to securing the transition – initiatives such as the CO2 emission vehicle targets and the CountEmissionsEU set important stepping stones in this direction.
- Enhancing inter-modality: the standardisation of terminals and charging docks can be achieved through the creation of synergies between industries and common technologies.
Where is action needed the most?
The transition can only be considered successful if the entire logistics ecosystem cooperates. To do so, three crucial areas in which immediate action is necessary were identified.
- The cost gap during the transition phase must be bridged by policy instruments at the EU and national levels, pushing for a common and fast adoption of ZEV solutions.
- Predictability of additional availability of clean energy must be ensured, allowing expectations to be met.
- Logistics efficiency can only be increased through critical infrastructure investments to provide access to sustainable power and efficient transport axes.
Within these areas, ERTRAC identifies a series of key drivers for the transition, namely: expanding the availability of charging and refuelling infrastructure, harnessing AI and digital technologies, developing a new value chain to limit the waste of scarce resources, and addressing the driver shortage by accelerating the deployment of new technologies.
Ultimately, the roadmap highlights how the transition is a gradual process of evolution towards a sustainable freight-transport system. With infrastructure, regulation, and market uptake evolving at different paces, the coming decade will be crucial in determining how quickly Europe’s road freight system can become cleaner, smarter and more resilient.