ERTRAC publishes its latest roadmap and sets the direction for a competitive and sustainable European road transport

The new ERTRAC Roadmap on Circular Economy and Competitiveness of the European Road Transport highlights the necessary steps to ensure the European automotive industry’s long-term competitiveness. The roadmap emphasises the urgent priority of embedding circularity at the core of vehicle design, manufacturing, and lifecycle management.

This comprehensive roadmap defines Circular Economy (CE) as a systemic shift away from the traditional linear consumption model, promoting reuse, repair, recycling (following the 9R strategies: Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Recycle, and Recover)
To make this shift happen, many areas need to be addressed, such as the high levels of material consumption, dependency on critical non-EU resources, availability of resources …

The ERTRAC roadmap identifies and details key R&I priorities, such as, e.g. sustainable material development, advanced recycling processes, circular product design and much more. This latest ERTRAC roadmap confirms and reinforces the work already undertaken under the Pillar 4 of the 2Zero partnership, “LCA approaches and circular economy aspects for sustainable and innovative road mobility solutions”. It also makes clear that circularity must become a fundamental pillar of Europe’s road transport innovation agenda and a key building block in the transition towards a more sustainable road transport.

The transformation to zero tailpipe emissions and a fully circular economy are interlinked. Together, they are shaping a stronger, more sovereign and competitive Europe.

Download the roadmap here.