9th Edition of the RTR Conference – Biggest success yet.
The 3-days RTR conference in Brussels brought together road transport researchers and policy makers to discover and discuss the outcomes of Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe-funded projects. Almost 700 attendees participated in person over the three days, joined by more than 400 attendees online. The event featured 95 projects presented across 32 parallel sessions, covering topics such as electric motors, batteries, CCAM, AI, power electronics, software-defined vehicles, charging, urban mobility, traffic management, HMI, circularity, air quality, testing and validation, road safety, inclusiveness, retrofitting, and logistics.
This edition kicked off with an opening session during which the message was very clear: competitiveness is back on the EU political agenda. Competition from the rest of the world is fierce and growing, and the European automotive industry cannot afford to sit back and watch. Being competitive means being innovative, and this innovation must translate into affordable, resilient, market-ready solutions and products that end users want to buy. This needs to be backed by large-scale investments and solid business cases to scale-up solutions.
The plenary session of Day 2 covered the “scale gap” that European industries face in general, and, more specifically, the automotive industry. While the European automotive sector R&D spending exceeds those of the US and China combined, these investments do not reflect in quicker market uptake of innovations.
Mark Niklas, from the European Commission DG GROW presented four levers to be implemented by the end of 2026 to create the right conditions to scale and grow:
- Financial leverage from different tools:
- the Competitiveness Compass,
- the Automotive Action Plan R&I pillar, and
- a stronger link between Horizon Europe and the European Competitiveness Fund under the next MFF.
- Capital markets to stimulate investments
- Innovation-friendly environment, such as the 28th regime, to overcome EU market fragmentation and support cross-border scale-up.
Through 3 projects examples, our 3 invited speakers – Enric Aramburu (Applus +IDIADA), Arwed Schmidt (EasyMile) and Laurence Bechon (Software Republic – Renault Group) shared their experiences on what scaling could look like in practice:
- UPSCALE is a concrete illustration of how artificial intelligence (AI) can support engineering and testing/simulation when it is applied to design and development processes.
- AWARD shows why it is important to specialise in the value chain. Choosing the right business cases, focusing on what can generate revenue, and building the right partnerships early on can also contribute to commercial success.
- Vision4Rescue is a very successful example of a business-minded collaboration that is organised to deliver an integrated solution with a 360° approach, meaning the collaboration covers the full chain from concept and technology choices to user needs, adopted in a minimum of time (9 months of development only).
A common idea expressed through the panel: we need more speed and more agility to remain at the forefront of innovation.
The conference ended with this message: 2026 will be a year of change. The next steps include the preparation of a Strategic Research and Innovation (and Deployment) Agenda and forming an expert group which will work on building a community consensus on various topics until the end of 2027. In the long run, the automotive industry must develop the right skills and mindset to remain competitive.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to everyone, from the speakers to the moderators and participants, for making our 9th RTR edition one of the best editions to date.
See you next year for the 10th anniversary of our conference.
The presentations are downloadable from the WeTransfer link (valid until 16 March 2025) and the replays are watchable from the conference YouTube channel. You can also access our photo gallery (password: #RTR2026).
