Despite considerable support for the hydrogen mobility sector, there remains low take-up of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and vehicle sales remain low. This is a significant issue for the commercialisation of the sector, as whilst sales volumes are low, vehicle production costs and prices remain high. The lack of demand for hydrogen also damages the business case for investment in early hydrogen refuelling stations (HRS). The ZEFER project proposes a solution to this issue. ZEFER will demonstrate viable business cases for captive fleets of FCEVs in operations which can realise value from hydrogen vehicles, for example by intensive use of vehicles and HRS, or by avoiding pollution charges in city centres with applications where the refuelling characteristics of FCEVs suit the duty cycles of the vehicles. ZEFER aims to drive sales of FCEVs in these applications to other cities, thereby increasing sales volumes of FCEVs and improving the business case for HRS serving these captive fleets. ZEFER will deploy 180 FCEVs in Paris, Brussels and London. 170 FCEVs will be operated as taxi or private hire vehicles, and the remaining 10 will be used by the police. The vehicle customers are all partners in the project, so that deployments will occur quickly, (the majority of vehicles will be deployed by the end of 2018) and FCEV mileage will be accumulated rapidly (in Paris and Brussels mileages will be over 90,000 km/year; and in London mileages will be over 40,000 km/year). These applications mean that vehicle performance will be tested to the limit, allowing a demonstration of the technical readiness of new generation FCEVs for high usage applications. The vehicles will be supported by existing and planned HRS. ZEFER will complement these ambitious deployments with robust data collection, analysis of the business cases and technical performance of the deployments. A targeted dissemination campaign will aim to replicate the business cases across Europe.

GEMINI’s vision is to accelerate the progress towards climate neutrality by reinforcing a modal shift through the demonstration and uptake of new shared mobility services, active transport modes, and micromobility and their integration with public transport in new generation MaaS services. GEMINI will contribute to Inclusive, Safe, Resilient Transport and Smart Mobility services for passengers and goods in 4 areas: (i) Developing and testing sustainable business models for New Mobility Services (NMS), including shared connected automated vehicles and shared mobility public transport and public-private partnerships, to increase shared mobility (MaaS and MaaC) solutions for enterprises, families and tourists. (ii) Creating digital enablers to accommodate mobility services (collaboration platforms and multimodal MaaS solutions) (iii) Actively engaging stakeholders (co-creation) and integrating in NMS Social Innovation practices, towards incentivising behavioural shift and user acceptance. (iv) Creating policy recommendations to enable scale-up and replicability of the delivered results in the elaboration and implementation of SUMPs, urban mobility planning frameworks and contribute to the CIVITAS impact assessment framework. GEMINI will define, ideate, co-create, validate, amplify, and upscale five dimensions of innovation (Business, Social & Behavioural, Operational, Technology Enablers, and Governance & Policy Framework) for delivering safe, resilient, accessible, affordable, and sustainable shared mobility solutions and demonstrate them in 4 Mobility Living Labs (Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Munich, Turin) and 4 Twinning Cities (Helsinki, Paris, Porto, Ljubljana). The MLLs will stimulate improved access to public transport whilst introducing sustainable mobility business models in urban and peri-urban contexts, in turn leading changes in mobility patterns and behaviours, aimed at less car-centred urban mobility systems.

Hydrogen Mobility Europe 2 (H2ME 2) brings together action in 8 European countries to address the innovations required to make the hydrogen mobility sector truly ready for market. The project will perform a large-scale market test of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, passenger and commercial fuel cell electric vehicles operated in real-world customer applications and demonstrate the system benefits generated by using electrolytic hydrogen solutions in grid operations. H2ME 2 will increase the participation of European manufacturers into the hydrogen sector, and demonstrate new vehicles across a range of platforms, with increased choice: new cars (Honda, and Daimler), new vans (range extended vehicles from Renault/Symbio and Renault/Nissan/Intelligent Energy) and a new medium sized urban delivery truck (Renault Trucks/Symbio). H2ME 2 develops an attractive proposition around range extended vehicles and supports a major roll-out of 1,000 of these vehicles to customers in France, Germany, Scandinavia and the UK. 1,230 new hydrogen fuelled vehicles will be deployed in total, trebling the existing fuel cell fleet in Europe. H2ME 2 will establish the conditions under which electrolytic refuelling stations can play a beneficial role in the energy system, and demonstrate the acquisition of real revenues from provision of energy services for aggregated electrolyser-HRS systems at a MW scale in both the UK and France. This has the further implication of demonstrating viable opportunities for reducing the cost of hydrogen at the nozzle by providing valuable energy services without disrupting refuelling operations. H2ME 2 will test 20 new HRS rigorously at high level of utilisation using the large vehicle deployment. The loading of stations by the end of the project is expected to average 20% of their daily fuelling capacity, with some stations exceeding 50% or more. This will test the HRS to a much greater extent than has been the case in previous projects.