The ITS World Congress 2021 from 11 to 15 October 2021 marked the end of the largest automotive project ever managed by EICT: L3Pilot [www.L3Pilot.eu]. With a total budget of 68 million euros, 34 partners from 12 countries came together co-ordinated by Volkswagen AG for more than four years to create a harmonized test environment for Automated Driving throughout Europe. The EU co-funded the project that united all major European car manufacturers in pre-competitive research, with 36 million euros. This video produced by EICT gives a comprehensive overview of the project: https://youtu.be/bjMEwIGCNvc. 

EICT managed the project in close cooperation with the coordinator, the partners and the EU. This included reporting and project controlling as well as day-to-day operational project management. 

In addition, EICT acted as Dissemination Manager and took over the communication of the project results via different channels. An important mission of the project was to make research on Automated Driving more visible. To meet this target, EICT initiated a series of showcases displaying test vehicles and demonstrating functions to foster the dialogue with decision-makers in politics and business. Hands-on experience while driving in L3Pilot cars was also this complex event: 

At the ITS World Congress in Hamburg 2021, L3Pilot hosted a week-long final event at the most important international Intelligent Transport Systems industry event. EICT designed and organised a week full of event highlights. An exhibition showed 12 test vehicles and the cross-project results, for example of the user studies and the safety evaluation. With a total of 450 m², the project was prominently represented in one of the exhibition halls, visible from afar. For example, former Federal Minister of Transport, Andreas Scheuer (CSU), visited the booth to get an overview over the current state of research in Automated Driving at the European level. 

In front of the halls, the project cars left for tours through Hamburg's city centre and on Hamburg's motorways. EICT coordinated the demonstrations of Automated Driving Functions in ten vehicles of the partners Volkswagen, BMW, fka, Ford, Honda, Stellantis and Stellantis-CRF on public roads. EICT supported the cooperation with the media by providing press information and coordinating partner activities and presented the event widely on social media. In addition, EICT organised a two-day conference with the partners to present the project results in detail.
A detailed documentation of the whole event and its organisation can be found in this public deliverable: https://bit.ly/3JfBzcp. 

The final press release can be found here: https://bit.ly/37lx2a7. 

As part of the project closure, an editorially revised and designed version of the deliverable "Code of Practice for the Development of Automated Driving Functions", a guide for the development of safe automated driving functions, was produced led by EICT. The book can be found here: https://bit.ly/3Jh7DfQ. 

User studies were an extensive part of EICT's work for L3Pilot. For example, EICT was responsible for conducting a large-scale, multi-year international survey for which data was collected in 17 countries and subsequently analysed. The resulting public deliverable, details of the study and publicly available data can be found here: https://l3pilot.eu/data. In connection with the user study, these scientific publications were published with the participation of the EICT: 
•    Louw, T., Madigan, R., Lee, Y.M., Nordhoff, S., Lehtonen, E., Innamaa, S., Malin, F., Bjorvatn, A., Merat, N. (2021). Drivers’ Intentions to Use Different Functionalities of Conditionally Automated Cars: A Survey Study of 18,631 Drivers from 17 Countries
•    Lehtonen, E., Malin, F., Innamaa, S., Nordhoff, S. , Louw, T., Bjorvatn, A., Merat, N. (2020). Are multimodal travellers going to abandon sustainable travel for L3 automated vehicles? 
•    Nordhoff, S., Louw, T., Innamaa, S., Lehtonen, E., Beuster, A., Torrao, G., Bjorvatn, A., Kessel, T., Malin, F., Happee, R., Merat, N. (2020). Using the UTAUT2 model to explain public acceptance of conditionally automated (L3) cars: A questionnaire study among 9,118 car drivers from eight European countries

Business models for the future of Automated Driving were another topic of the EICT. The public deliverable developed under the lead authorship of EICT can be found here: https://bit.ly/3tfDxnD. 

Find out more about the project here: www.L3Pilot.eu. 
For more information on the L3Pilot project, please contact hristiyan.stoyanov(at)eict.de.  

Copyright Picture: L3Pilot consortium, photographer Patrick Lux