Official kick-off of the EGVI Impact Assessment 2014 – 2020 study

In 2023, on its own initiative, EGVIAfor2Zero (the counterpart of the EC in the 2Zero Partnership) launched an impact assessment of its predecessors, the European Green Vehicle Initiative (EGVI). The aim is to demonstrate the benefits and possible long-term impacts of public-private partnerships.

It is the 3^rd time such an analysis is being undertaken, and its findings complement the previous impact assessments very nicely. The 1st impact assessment was done following the European Green Cars Initiative, and the 2nd one was published to celebrate the 10 years (2009 – 2019) of road transport decarbonisation partnerships.

The study was commissioned to Strategy Engineers, and EGVIAfor2Zero organised a webinar on 18^th January 2024 to officially kick off its publication. Jacob Foyle, one of the co-authors, was invited to present the main findings and was then joined on stage by Stephan Neugebauer, EGVIAfor2Zero chairman, for a broader discussion on the real-world benefits of EGVI, for the overall sector as well as for the end users, and to discuss what should be done in the future.

Innovation and improvements to the vehicle technical performance, time-to-market reduction, commercial benefit, skills development, overall cost reduction, synergies and long-term relationships between members, the inclusion of user needs … are only some of the key benefits at the heart of EGVI. As correctly said by Stephan Neugebauer: “[Green Vehicles] Projects and their positive outcomes are facts. We can see the results on our roads”. EGVI’s approach was robust and had all the key ingredients needed for its success.

The following figure summarises very well the positive impact of the EGVI partnership: its Return on Investment (RoI) is estimated to be up to 40X; as stated in the report, this is “at the leading end of international benchmarks” and is significantly higher than any other similar partnership or initiative with a similar funding level.

Some areas for further improvements were identified in the report and touched upon during the discussion, particularly:

• the timeline for the call preparation must be reduced to address properly the reality of the sector;
• an even more important focus on cost reduction would be beneficial;
• the need to maintain a good balance between focused topics and a high ambition level. Road transport is a very complex subject, and technology evolves quickly; partnerships such as 2Zero cannot predict what will happen in advance. Collaboration and exchange, particularly with technology platforms, is essential to ensuring that all topics of interest are covered, even beyond the scope of partnership(s).

You can access the presentation here and (re-)watch the webinar via the recording on our YouTube channel.