Activities are divided into 2 different types of activities. The “horizontal” activities relate to generic and collaborative activities that are key to developing synergies through the project. The “vertical” type activities relate to specific innovation, development, and demonstration activities. The developments on Energy management, Aerodynamics, Smart loading units, and front-end design for safety all feeding into the demonstration and validation phase. The European transport sector contributes to about 25% of the total CO2 emissions in Europe. The demand for transport of freight will increase by app. 45% by 2040! The growth for the different modes is app. rail by about 43 %, road by about 55 % and IWW by about 19 %. The cost for transport (2019, including external cost in ct/ton-km) for road is 4.47 2.03 for rail and 2.00 for inland navigation. The main cost contributions for road transport are the climate impact and accidents representing with over 50%. The pre and post related processes represent for all three transport means a significant cost level up to 1ct/ton-km(20-25% for road and 50% for rail & inland navigation). It should be stated that the cost for rail transport is only valid for an electric mix out of pure green electricity. The cost of running trucks for road transport are expressed in the total cost of ownership. The TCO of a long-haul fleet of 100 vehicles over a period of 48 months exceed the 35MEUR. Driver wages and fuel (indirectly CO2 emissions) are representing >66%. New technologies and innovations may increase the purchase price of the vehicles but should reduce running cost, by reducing number of vehicles km, energy & emissions, and improving road safety for driver, occupants and VRU. A paradigm shift is needed to cope with these challenges. AEROFLEX focused on the vision of “The Physical Internet”. This includes the optimization of multimodal transport chains by drawing on the advantages of the different modes. From these figures, it became obvious that the focus of AEROFLEX is to reduce CO2 emissions, the impact on climate, road accidents, TCO and pre & post related processes by transporting the same freight. An overall goal is an efficiency improvement in long haul road transport up to 33%. The main results are a focus on long-haul freight road transport, the logistics within the long haul high-capacity freight transport using the European Modular System and vehicle configurations, the most optimal balance of weight & volume, the flexibility in the art of transport and the adaptability in size of loading units. The AEROFLEX innovations developed are incorporated in 2 demonstrators, running a vast test and use case program to demonstrate the proof of concept and their impact. Part of the demonstration program was an in depth collaboration with multimodal transport operators, running the AEROFLEX trailer on rail using the CFL rail corridor through France. In line with the latest developments, digitalization, and roadmap 2Zero, incl. the ability to use AEROFLEX innovations in zero emission vehicle powertrain.
