With the purpose of transforming road transportation in Europe to zero-emission mobility, POWERDRIVE aims at developing next generation, highly efficient, cost-effective, and compact power electronics solutions that integrate a portfolio of technologies for multi-objective optimisation of electric powertrains of battery electric vehicles. These integrated solutions can be applied to both low and high-performance vehicles, and they will be suitable for diverse types of electric vehicles. The concept of POWERDRIVE is that all the experience and expertise of the project partners in the development of electric drivetrain components will be leveraged and lead into the integration of advanced power electronics solutions for an optimised powertrain. This concept brings additional opportunities to strengthen Europe’s supply chain in electromobility for road transportation and to achieve zero-emission road mobility. POWERDRIVE intends to implement innovative strategies to improve the efficiency and power density as well as to reduce the cost of electric powertrains while keeping performance high and reliable. The technologies developed in POWERDRIVE will accelerate the development and deployment of zero-emission road mobility which will deliver concrete benefits including improved quality of life, economic growth, and new business opportunities for all the EU member states. An optimised EV powertrain will significantly reduce transport emissions and tackle the issues of air quality and noise pollution in urban areas.

The transport sector contributes to about 25% of total CO2 emissions in the EU and is the only sector where the trend is still increasing. Taking into account the growing demand on the road transport system and the ambitious targets of the EC’s Transport White Paper, it is paramount to increase the efficiency of freight transport. The vision of the AEROFLEX project is to support vehicle manufacturers and the logistics industry to achieve the coming challenges for road transport. The overall objective of the AEROFLEX project is to develop and demonstrate new technologies, concepts and architectures for complete vehicles with optimised aerodynamics, powertrains and safety systems as well as flexible and adaptable loading units with advanced interconnectedness contributing to the vision of a “physical internet”. The optimal matching of novel vehicle concepts and infrastructures is highly important, requiring the definition of smart infrastructure access policies for the next generation of trucks, load carriers and road infrastructure. The specific technical objectives, main innovations and targeted key results are: 1. Characterise the European freight transport market (map, quantify and predict), the drivers, the constraints, the trends, and the mode and vehicle choice criteria 2. Develop new concepts and technologies for trucks with reduced drag, which are safer, comfortable, configurable and cost effective and ensure satisfaction of intermodal customer needs under varying transport tasks and conditions. 3. Demonstrate potential truck aerodynamics and energy management improvements with associated impact assessments of the new vehicle concepts, technologies and features developed in the AEROFLEX project. 4. Drafting of coherent recommendations for revising standards and legislative frameworks in order to allow the new aerodynamic and flexible vehicle concepts on the road. To achieve an overall 18-33% efficiency improvement in road transport / long haulage by 2025+.