Future transport and mobility will be disrupted by innovations in Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs), in which safety will be of the highest priority. SAFE-UP aims to proactively address the upcoming safety challenges by developing innovative technologies, testing and assessment methods. SAFE-UP is based on 3 key pillars: i) future safety-critical scenarios, ii) new safety technologies, and iii) novel safety assessment methodologies. Future safety-critical scenarios will be designed and analysed in a highly automated and mixed traffic environment in a traffic simulation platform. Based on these scenarios, new safety technologies for active and passive systems will be developed, resulting in 4 Demos. The passive safety system of Demo 1 will include restraint and occupant monitoring technologies for new seating positions. Three active safety system prototypes (all on-vehicle, one of them also including on-user and infrastructure) will be developed. Demo 2 will enhance the interaction between vehicles and VRUs under bad weather conditions while Demo 3 will integrate advanced intervention functions to avoid critical events. Demo 4 will consist of a safety solution based on C-ITS to enable timely warning provisions. To prove the overall benefits, new safety assessment methodologies will be thoroughly designed. The SAFE-UP consortium is another major asset, consisting of key players in mobility across the entire value chain: advanced OEMs, leading suppliers & industry, and academia. The new technologies will reduce fatalities by covering pedestrians, cyclists and Powered Two Wheelers in urban areas through active safety systems and cars in non-urban through passive safety technologies, which will impact 64% of all road fatalities. SAFE-UP will also develop targeted education and training schemes for fostering the implementation of automated driving functions, while also focusing on raising awareness of future road safety challenges.

The automotive industry faces tremendous challenges in addressing decarbonization through electrification, developing future solutions for inclusive, safe and affordable mobility. Many of these changes require a radical re-thinking of existing development processes, with the share of software in modern mobility solutions continuously increasing. The rising importance of the software layer results in the so-called software-defined vehicle (SDV). Automotive software will be developed and adapted in continuous cycles. Therefore an abstraction from the underlying hardware needs to be implemented. As a result, the automotive industry is transitioning to an agile software development process. The dramatic increase of software and complexity, along with the advances of international competition in this domain, calls for an approach, in which non-differentiating software is developed jointly as open source. To address these challenges, the EU, together with industry, governments, and research institutions, have launched the European SDV Ecosystem. To turn this into reality, this proposal outlines the vision and activities for a Coordination and Support Action. FEDERATE (Software-Defined Vehicle Support and Coordination Project) aims to bring together all relevant stakeholders to accelerate the development of an SDV Ecosystem, to foster a vibrant European community and orchestrate the SDV R&D&I activities. The consortium of FEDERATE is formed by major European OEMs, automotive tiers, semiconductor companies, relevant industry associations and industrial SDV initiatives, including the Eclipse SDV WG, and supported by a scientific board. FEDERATE will work towards a common understanding on the vision of the SDV program and create an orchestrated advice for current and future projects in the SDV program. In addition, recommendations for future calls are prepared in alignment with a Roadmap and Joint Vision Document for accelerated SDV R&D&I, created as part of the CSA

The HAL4SDV proposal aligns with the EU Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2022 on Electronic Components and Systems. It aims to pioneer methods, technologies, and processes for series vehicle development beyond 2030, driven by anticipated advancements in microelectronics, communication technology, software engineering, and AI. HAL4SDV envisions a future where vehicles are fully integrated into smart cities, intelligent highways, and cyberspace, blurring the lines between inside and outside the vehicle. Assumptions include data-centricity, code portability, efficient data fusion, unlimited scalability, real-time capabilities, and robust cybersecurity. The objectives encompass unifying software interfaces, creating a hardware abstraction framework, enabling Over-The-Air (OTA) updates, designing platform architectures, ensuring hardware abstraction and virtualization, offering hardware support, automating integration, supporting safety features, harnessing edge computing, implementing security measures, and providing essential development tools. By focusing on these objectives, HAL4SDV aims to establish a unified ecosystem for software-defined vehicles, positioning Europe's automotive industry for continued leadership post-2030 while leveraging existing results and technologies to accelerate progress.