Focus Topic 1

Transportation systems allow connecting people, cultures, cities, countries and continents. Transport networks also ensure access to key public services, such as education and health, contributing to a better quality of life.

Unfortunately, transportation systems lead to important amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions that contribute to global warming. In Europe, the sector of transport is the most important sector in terms of GHG (more than 25%) and the only sector that is still increasing these emissions. Moreover thermal vehicles lead also to particle emissions that impact human health.

The electrification of the transport sector is one of the solutions to significantly move to more sustainability while keeping the possibility to travel. But many challenges are encountered to develop sustainable transport systems in the perspective of the Net Zero carbon goal in 2050.

The proposed focus topic aims to bring together experts from academia and industry to highlight both the potential benefits and also the challenges related to transport electrification in a wide range of applications in electric vehicles, trains, ships and aircraft, with crucial challenges such as charging stations and grid coupling, fleet management, new energy vectors such as hydrogen, etc.