All eyes on sustainable speed
The launch of a new automotive research initiative which will focus on the development of an ecological sports vehicle.
The strategic HI-ZEV Industrial Innovation Project has an approach which combines traditional manufacturing production with the development of new services and technologies while exploring the synergies between manufacturing companies, service companies, industrial research and academia. Their network, with cross-sector chains of production integrating manufacturing, advanced services and new technologies, includes both companies and research centres with proven experience skills in different fields both at national and international level. This union of diverse skills should achieve a significant impact in the automotive sector. The HI-ZEV project is a partnership composed of medium, small and micro enterprises, research centres and universities. More than 24 entities are involved in the HI-ZEV consortium. The project kicked off in January 2011 and will last 36 months. The industrial production of their final prototype - an ecological sport vehicle with a sustainable propulsion system and an innovative energy flow management system - is also foreseen by the end of this project. Co-funded by Italy's Industria 2015 National program, a large number of technological solutions will be studied and analyzed in the project. These solutions are set to make the final product highly innovative and competitive. Behind the HI-ZEV project lays an analysis made by Italian Pole for Sustainable Mobility (POMOS), active in the field of transfer of knowledge from academia to industry, encouraging the aggregation of small and medium enterprises involved in the field of Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (ULEV) and Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV). Technological innovation in the automotive field is usually first tested on high performance vehicles like the ones proposed by HI-ZEV. The European Union has a strategy on clean and energy efficient vehicles aiming to: * promote a new industrial approach, based on clean and energy-efficient vehicles that will boost the competitiveness of the European industry;
PRESS4TRANSPORT is funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7)