May 4th, 2022
Intelligent Transport's Leah Hockley sat down with Maitane Berecibar, Omar Hegazy and Aida Abdulah of the ASSURED project to find out more about how the project has worked to overcome the barriers for mass-scale bus electrification, as well as deployment, and delivered key innovations that enable the optimisation of fleet operations.
Electrification of public transport is one of the main answers to cities' everpressing challenges of poor air quality and traffic congestion. Clean vehicles are quickly transforming the way that public transport is operated in our cities, and many (European Union (EU)) initiatives are working towards creating the sustainable cities that we envision in our future.
"Clean vehicles are quickly transforming the way that public transport is operated in our cities"
One of the core-initiatives working towards this future was the ASSURED project, which developed and tested innovative solutions to support the standardisation and interoperability of electric vehicles (EVs) charging. Both are key for large-scale electrification: they enable operators to mix and match different brands of vehicles and chargers, which makes their integration into the public transport network more flexible and, therefore, cheaper.
"ASSURED launched in 2017 with a 39-partner strong consortium uniting stakeholders from the entire transport and energy supply sectors"