News

In 2019 Drive Sweden’s partnership expanded further by welcoming 33 new partners. Today, Drive Sweden includes 136 partners located in 16 different countries around the world. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to tackle future challenges and develop new solutions together, not just in Sweden, but also internationally.

One of the projects that recently concluded its work is AHA – A Human Approach. This human-centered project has worked with an open mind-set while gathering cities and authorities, industry and of course the people, enabling them to develop a method to create a common agenda. It is true public engagement and an important tool for society planning and industry. And it also lies the foundation for the newly started AHA II.

On November 27th results from projects within our thematic area Digital Infrastructure were presented to a packed venue, at an event called Data sharing and Control Towers - results from Drive Sweden projects. The interest was great as to what these highly relevant projects address such as CAT (Connected Automated Truck), connected traffic control, data sharing and how to utilise the full potential of ot use the Drive Sweden Innovation Cloud.

A number of new strategic projects are starting within Drive Sweden. The projects will contribute to new knowledge within all the thematic areas and will be important in the development of smart, innovative transport and mobility solutions.

On November 7 a full house at our venue in Stockholm got to take part of some of the project results made within the KRABAT project. Presentations from all work packages, covering connected shared shuttle services, at the auto pilot in Stockholm, system solutions for shared cars, automated city buses, connected traffic signals and the policy lab fo future services, were made. And the progress being made was clear.

The potential an autonomous bus can have in a bus depot was demonstrated on November 12 by Volvo Buses and Keolis. An electric and autonomous bus then drove itself between different stations a bus needs to visit in the depot between the shifts. The demonstration is one of the first in the world and represents an important step on the road to more autonomous vehicles as well as safer, cleaner and more efficient public transport.

As new technology and services constantly move forward the need for innovation within policy and regulation becomes increasingly important. If the legal framework is having a hard time keeping up with the rapid changes great innovation might be halted or even stopped. As a result of this, Drive Sweden has named policy development as one of the program's thematic areas. Further plans for this will be presented shortly. An actor that will be involved in this area is KOMET, an initiative from the Swedish government to create a better and more in-sync playingfield for innovation, with focus on policy development.