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Automotive Opportunities
Slovenia is home to a French Renault factory and has an extensive network of automotive parts manufacturers producing for several global carmakers. Slovenia’s automotive component manufacturers have a strong reputation for innovation, with many patents and OEM agreements with premium brands, including recent agreements to supply key components for electric cars. In addition, new startups have emerged offering autonomous drive solutions, some of which have already attracted significant capital from European and American investment funds.
Summary
The European Commission just released its Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy Action plan with a series of initiatives that will guide the work of European countries for the next four years. The priority is to reach the climate target emissions for the transportation sector in the next thirty years. As outlined in the European Green Deal report, 90% of emissions must be cut by 2050.
France is a European leader in the fight against climate change. The French government just released its “France Revival Plan 2030”, which focuses on the ecological transition of the French economy and its production tools. France will invest in new technologies with the goal of becoming the first European country to reach carbon neutrality in 2050.
This goal will be achieved by increasing the number of zero-emission vehicles (cars, buses, trains, heavy-duty, aircraft, and marine vessels). Priority will be given to renewable and low-carbon fuels, to developing climate neutral cities through the installation of more charging stations, to zero-emission airports and ports, and to expanding high-speed rail traffic in order to reach a fully operational multimodal Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). This will be achieved through the use of autonomous vehicles, scooters, e-bikes, and multimodal transportation means and infrastructure.
France will follow the path of Europe by betting on smart mobility solutions as they can contribute to a 5 to 8% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The focus will be on technologies related to intelligent transportation systems (ITS), as well as electric and alternative fuel vehicles, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and machine intelligence.
The French mobility orientation law, voted in December 2019, will encourage the development of MaaS (Mobility as a Service), open data and ticketing, autonomous vehicles, carpooling, car-sharing, free-floating and electric fleets and charging stations.
The French association ITS Atec France has been promoting the French Mobility 3.0 initiative Livre_Vert_Mobilite_3-0_-_ATEC_ITS_France-2.pdf (mobilite-intelligente.com), since 2016. ITS France and its institutional partners such as CEREMA, IFSTTAR, and ADEME, are building a collective strategic steering framework in order to achieve and deploy in France and
Slovenia
Slovenia’s Jožef Stefan Institute has been a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics research. The November 2019 UNESCO general conference in Paris selected Slovenia to host the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence, which is expected to open in 2020. Solvesall, one of the Institute’s spinoffs, has implemented more than 30 AI-based projects with European and American companies over the past two years, including research on self-driving cars.
Slovenia has also been a leader in the production of robots in recent decades. In 2018, a Japanese multinational doubled its robot production in the country with a new plant in Kočevje, while several Slovenian companies have modernized their production lines through new robot solutions.
Robotics / Machine Intelligence Opportunities
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FRANCe