The Supporting Action NextHyLights will work in close cooperation with and under supervision of FCH JU. NextHyLights will directly contribute to the FCH JU activities regarding the preparation of the next calls and will be prepared to react flexibly on FCH JU requirements. It will use the MAIP as the basis and will help to detail it towards the AIPs taking the ambitions and opportunities of all stakeholders into account.

The concept of the project is to develop a strategy (Master Plan) on how to bridge the gap between today’s demo projects and the start of market introduction by building upon existing knowledge from various activities including: HFP & FCH JU (implementation plans), HyWays, R2H, HyLights (methods, instruments and databases), HyFleet:CUTE, ZERO REGIO, HYCHAIN and other demo projects (hardware experience). The key partners of the former FP6 projects HyWays and HyLights will assure that the results, instruments and lessons learnt from these projects can be used at their best.

The Master Plan needs to be organized in timely steps comprising of milestones regarding cost and performance targets. The Master Plan development requires the separate preparation of detailed work and roll-out plans for the vehicle segments ‘passenger cars’, ‘buses’ and ‘other vehicles’ which will be checked against each other for coherence and then be integrated in the overall plan. In case of the bus segment a close relationship with the Hydrogen Bus Alliance (HBA) will be established via Element Energy who is already in charge of the Alliance’s secretariat. Here work can be based on previous HBA activities such as the HBA strategy paper. The Master Plan development will also take into account social and environmental impacts as well as the regulatory requirements of the activities planned in each vehicle segment. Furthermore, the project will prepare a criteria catalogue to identify regions / municipalities which are suitable to become hydrogen cluster regions.