1. Identifying technical
breakthroughs
 Not a « silver bullet » innovation, but a combination of solutions adapted to several
segments:
– Spatial range: urban, interurban, etc.
– Size and market segments
 Three main drivers:
– Diffusion of electric vehicles (mainly focused on urban use in the beginning), with
uncertainties on the capacity of the grid to provide sufficient low-carbon power.
– New fuels: liquid biofuels, biogas, hydrogen?
– Well-to-wheel, to-wing, to-wake fuel efficiency.
 Main uncertainties
– Discovering the optimal path/calendar combination: industrial actors and policy makers
must keep options
– Finding the right business model
 Vigilance points: Metrics
– Standardization vs representativeness
– Tailpipe vs whole lifecycle emissions
 Available technologies enable us to reach targets. What incentives?
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2. Supply chain organization and
demand-side behaviors
 Supply chain organization:
– Main driver in short term = combination of improvements in current organization :
Fuel efficiency, eco driving, telematics, payload optimisation, tyre management, combination of
electronic kilometer charges and vehicle upsizing (infrastructure costs ?)
– Potential for efficiency and emission reduction in urban deliveries
– Addressing the limits of the current intermodal solutions
• Infrastructure (high leverage of investment on bottlenecks)
• Reliability of rail operations
 Demand-side : behavior of car users
– Individual car buyers: need for information (labelling : absolute emissions, « best-in-class »)
– Individual car users: need for new business models and a new mobility patterns
– Point of vigilance : user acceptance of policy tools
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3. Public incentives
 Need for long-term visibility on regulation
– Long-term stretching targets regarding CO2 emissions are essential
– These targets have to be set by the public authorities
 Need for better policy design to reduce market distortions
– Metrics :
• define new test procedures which represent real life emissions
• work towards lifecycle emissions assessment
– Common taxation principles and standards, including explicit link with CO2
emissions, and avoiding tax thresholds and other distortions
 Carbon pricing is necessary but not decisive
– European current carbon price very low compared to implicit taxation
– Two instruments (cap-and-trade and taxation) largely equivalent
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