EIT-H2Cities is a XKIC collaboration driving industry-led systemic innovation for the uptake of hydrogen (H2) applications in mobility. EIT UM, EIT-M and CKIC will collaborate with industry actors to create Hydrogen Living Labs in two RIS cities. Together with the local community, innovators will test new products and changes in the energy chain. Hereby, EIT-H2Cities will break the circular conundrum of high production cost, low demand, no infrastructure, and address cities’ lack of capacity to build a replicable roadmap for local authorities looking to integrate hydrogen into their net-zero strategies. On budgetary division, in EIT-H2Cities the three KICs aim to consume less than 20% of the total costs. Defined innovation partners cover 48% of total costs and new legal partners will cover 32% of total costs. The decision to have legal partners within the XKIC is innovative in itself but also drives up co-financing and ensures city and industry full engagement in the initiative with a higher likelihood of financial success. Furthermore, EIT-H2Cities will build on programmes such as the Mission Platform and aims to become an umbrella association for wider engagement beyond the project lifespan, including for example district heating systems and local generation and storage. Our open partnership model will deliver EIT core KPIs on marketed innovation and SME/ Start-ups created, while a commercial pipeline and city replications will result from the experience of EIT-H2Cities. Dissemination, communication and exploitation activities will aim at inspiring follower cities and exposing citizens to the benefits of H2 applications in the mobility sector. Overall, EIT-H2Cities is a unique opportunity for a highly relevant XKIC that responds to community needs and enables EU companies to gain skills, capacity and market share in a rapidly growing economic sector.

ENTRANCE offers a common and legitimate European matchmaking platform and complementary off-line services designed to mobilise financial resources to accelerate the market access and scale up of “first of a kind” sustainable transport solutions, thereby reducing the European CO2 emissions and pollutants caused by the transport and mobility sector. The overall concept focus of the ENTRANCE project lies in the “supply-demand-finance” triangle that is envisaged for all transport and mobility modes and all relevant stakeholders. Through the ENTRANCE Matchmaking accelerator funnel workflow, first-of-a-kind zero, or near-to-zero, emission transport solutions will be identified, attracted and matched with potential buyers and financing opportunities and knowledge on good practices on the deployment of innovative solutions, European and national tenders, and legislation will be exchanged through the online platform. Training and brokerage activities will be executed to increase the maturity of the ENTRANCE community and bridge the gap between innovative solutions and the market. In addition, to de-risk the uptake of innovative solutions, ENTRANCE will facilitate purchase aggregation through matchmaking activities and by setting up a neutral trustee for the orchestration of purchase aggregations. Access to finance will be supported through an online funding programme database and individual and personalised innovation finance advice and support will be offered. The funding advice will combine public funding, private investment opportunities, and the best mix of alternative finance models for solution providers. Finally, ENTRANCE will facilitate cross-fertilisation and clustering activities with European transport and mobility associations and initiatives to support critical mass and achieve a coordinated European effort to boost the uptake and upscaling of innovative transport and mobility solutions.

UPPER aims at spearheading a Public Transport revolution that will strengthen the role of PT as the flagship of sustainability and innovation of mobility in cities, leading the transition towards a zero emission mobility which will become the cornerstone of climate neutrality by 2030, in line with the goal of Cities Mission and the priorities of the Green Deal. UPPER will put the Public Transport at the centre of the mobility ecosystem and will implement a combination of 84 push and pull measures, acting on the 5 innovation axes that condition user’s choices: mindset and culture, urban mobility planning, mobility services ecosystem, road network management and democratic governance. These measures will act in 4 different timescales (from shorter to longer-term): communication, operations, infrastructure and urban fabric. The UPPER measures will be supported by the UPPER Toolkit (U-TWIN, U-SIM, U-NEED, U-GOV, U-KNOW, U-TRANSFER and U-SUMP), 7 IT tools combining social and technological innovation that will be demonstrated within the measures in the 5+5 UPPER living labs and twinning sites, with the overall target of increasing the use of public transport by >30% and the user satisfaction by >25%, leaving nobody behind in the process. This integrated and holistic approach will ease the cooperation among authorities and operators, offer a physical and digital environment to test the measures, update the existing SUMPs, optimise the PT offer in line with user needs and patterns, involve the users in the overall mobility decision chain, trigger the behavioural change in favour of Public Transport and achieve an attractive, efficient, reliable, safe, inclusive and affordable Public Transport system in line with the concept of Mobility as a Right (MaaR)

At EIT Urban Mobility (EIT UM), our mission is to accelerate change towards a sustainable mobility model for liveable urban spaces. All our activities serve the three societal impact goals of improving quality of life in cities, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and creating jobs that strengthen the European urban mobility sector. The Business Plan (BP) 2023-2025 is the main tool to drive forward the implementation of our Strategic Agenda 2021-2027. The activities described in this BP are oriented along three intervention areas: bringing talent to business, bringing innovations to the market, and bringing startups to scale. In line with these, this BP aims to leverage on the new partnership model introduced in 2022 which prioritises openness and accessibility of the network to reach impact goals with a strong community of over 200 active partners per year. Nine Challenge Areas stemming from city challenges are prioritized within this BP to provide topical direction and enable the highest innovation potential with maximum societal, ecological, and economic impact. In parallel to delivering on impact, we aim to boost our programme elements towards becoming financially sustainable. After testing various revenue mechanisms in 2021 and 2022, we are putting a stronger focus on equity as a substantive revenue stream. Furthermore, partnership growth will be boosted across all regions and with a focus on a steep growth of participating SMEs. Finally, alternative funding sources such as bidding for EU and national funding will be ramped up, and private sponsors for pilots will be attracted. Overall, the BP2023-2025 takes a substantial step on EIT UM’s path towards becoming a social impact investor. It fosters both – efficiency in the delivery of the Financial Sustainability strategy as well as the creation of social impact through strong efforts in implementing the EIT and KIC Impact Frameworks – and by that guides EIT UM towards achieving our mission.

BatteReverse aims to enable the next generation of battery reverse logistics (RL). It will develop a more efficient and universal method for battery discharge and first diagnosis for a wide range of Li-ion battery types, safety packaging with a monitoring system reducing thermal runaway risk during transportation of batteries, automated dismantling and sorting of battery components based on a safe and more efficient human-robot collaboration, and a more precise and faster Remaining Useful Life assessment of battery modules for 2nd life applications based on acoustic testing and machine learning algorithms. On top of that, BatteReverse will develop a Battery Data Space with standardised labelling and battery passport functionalities to improve battery identification. We will connect the stakeholders through a community platform and analyse the entire RL process by a digital twin (DT) simulation that will optimise profitability of RL circular business models. The innovations will be integrated and demonstrated in an operational environment in two use-cases for end-of-first-life (EoFL) EV batteries - recycling and repurposing – mirrored with the DT simulation. By 2026 we expect these developments to contribute to following outcomes: increase recycling efficiency by 5%, raise share of repurposed EoFL batteries to 10%, reduce risk of severe events in reverse logistics to 1/10.000, successfully simulate two successful RL business models and to have a stakeholder’s community platform with 50+ stakeholders. These outcomes will contribute to the sovereignty of the EU in the battery sector. By further uptake of the developed results beyond the project, BatteReverse targets to avoid the use of 3.691 tonnes/year of primary critical raw materials, on top of that avoid the deployment of 100,8 MWh capacity of new batteries yearly while capturing an extra €30,24 million/year value out of EoFL batteries and avoiding 31 severe risk events/year within the EU RL battery chain by 2029.