FURORE - Future Road Vehicle Research - A roadmap for the future
Overview
Background & policy context:
From June 2002 to November 2003, the European Thematic Network FURORE - Future Road Vehicle Research - established a platform of European stakeholders to discuss breakthrough technologies and the corresponding research demand for vehicles of the year 2020 and beyond.
The network focused predominantly on road vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, but was also analysing potential breakthrough technologies in advanced fuels and systems such as hybrids and alternative propulsion. FURORE served as an umbrella to initiate pre-competitive research activities for the development of these technologies by universities, R&D organisations and the automotive industry and also provided input for research programmes and initiatives such as ERTRAC - The European Road Transport Research Advisory Council.
Objectives:
Automotive R&D today has become a more international, collaborative effort within and between research organisations, universities and industry.
The FURORE Network aimed at improving this by creating an integrated, long-term research strategy for the European automotive sector, which is based on the specific point of view of research organisations and Universities. The overall objective of the FURORE Thematic Network was to establish a platform for the creation of an Automotive R&D Technology Roadmap describing automotive breakthrough technologies for the year 2020 and beyond based on transport and energy scenarios. It provided an independent expertise for the EU and member states for future research programs regarding road transport and guidance for research.
Methodology:
FURORE's Automotive R&D Technology Roadmap consolidated the specialist knowledge and the opinions of the participating organisations via several dedicated workshops, individual discussions with specialists in the fields of automotive research, voting surveys among FURORE-experts and a comprehensive literature analysis.
The topics discussed were:
- Energy & fuels (including conventional, advanced and alternative fuels),
- Powertrain technologies (including today's state-of-art technologies as well as advanced and alternative systems and after-treatment technologies),
- Complete vehicle aspects (including vehicle structure, safety and noise).
Every task was discussed according to:
- its current technology status,
- the targets for the year 2020 and beyond,
- the potential technologies which can fulfil future objectives,
- the hurdles and barriers that might hinder the introduction of the potential technologies, and
- the research demand needed to overcome major technological hurdles to successfully achieve the 2020-targets.
Share this page