The EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy sets ambitious targets of at least 30 million electric vehicles (EVs) and 3 million EV charging points in operation by 2030. A wide range of emerging vehicle and charging technologies and their alignment with these EU goals are playing a crucial role in achieving them. However, developments in recent years have primarily focused on "hard" technological advances and the maturity of technology-driven transport/mobility concepts, outpacing and insufficiently addressing the "soft" human component in this evolution. Therefore, the challenge relates to a number of inter-related themes, ranging from public acceptance of connectivity and automation which the new generation EVs will have, to user-centric design, ethical decision making, and training for new technologies/levels. This talk aims to shed some lights on the evaluation of the European transition to zero-emission mobility from a societal perspective. It highlights that the transition challenge is no longer technological but increasingly societal. The talk presents some scientific work in current EU-funded projects to provide evidence-based recommendations for closing the gap between technological capability and societal adoption.
ABOUT THE LECTURER
Professor Haibo Chen is a world-leading researcher in Intelligent Transportation Systems at the Institute of Transport, University of Leeds (UK), an active member of the ITS-UK Association, and an academy trainer of the European ITS Association (European Road Transport Telematics Implementation Coordination Association). He is the leader for the "Connected and Shared Mobility" research theme. He is a visiting honorary professor and an external academic advisor to several universities in China. Since 2020, he has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed papers in top international journals. In the recent years, he has led a large team at Leeds to participate in 10+ EU-funded projects of more than 70 million euros. His research interests include smart mobility, traffic and environment management and control, big data and digital twins in transport, zero-emission vehicles, automated transport systems etc.
