During a visit to UTAC in Essonne, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, Minister Delegate for Transport, and Guillaume Boudy, Secretary General for Investment, launched the “Digitalisation and Decarbonisation of Mobilities” acceleration strategy, which has been allocated €570 million by the fourth Investment Programme for the Future (PIA4). The aim of the “Logistics 4.0” measure is to “optimise, secure and decarbonise Massified Transport and Multimodal Interfaces” in order to improve the competitiveness of the French logistics chain and to take control of the environmental challenge it represents.

The players in the transport sector, local authorities, research institutes and federations have collaborated on this strategy, which focuses on the mobility of passengers and goods and is mainly centred on intermodality and deployment in the territories.

Transport is facing major technological and industrial transformations, linked to the ecological transition and the digital revolution as well as the arrival of automated autonomous vehicles. Research and experimental development are essential, especially in the road mobility sector, in order to create new modes of travel that meet the needs of users while being environmentally friendly.

Three calls for projects have been launched with the following objectives: ecological transition, economic competitiveness, territorial cohesion, sovereignty and resilience:

• Launched on July 28, the Call for Expressions of Interest (AMI) “Digitalisation and Decarbonisation of Rail Transport” is open until November 30, 2021 and has a budget of 250 million euros. A first round of calls took place on 24 September, which allowed promising projects to be identified.
• Launch of the call for projects “Automated road mobility, connected and low-carbon service infrastructures” with a budget of 200 million, on 20 October within the framework of the Ministerial Council for Development and Innovation in Transport (CMDIT), which will close on 11 January 2023, with two intermediate rounds on 12 January and 15 June 2022.
• Launch of the “Logistics 4.0” call for projects, endowed with 90 million, on 21 October within the framework of the Interministerial Committee for Logistics (CILOG) which will close on 15 December 2021 and 15 May 2022.

Two cross-cutting measures were also announced as part of this strategy:

• The need for changes in professional practices, reference systems and trades, particularly in terms of operations and safety. The support system for the development of skills and training will focus in particular on the digital theme and connected objects and complex systems engineering.
• A Priority Research Programme and Equipment (PEPR) which will aim to make significant progress in the knowledge of uses and impacts, and on the preparation of tools intended for users, principals and public policy makers, first and foremost local authorities, and will contribute in particular to two priorities which are the analysis of flows of people and goods (physical) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA).

Focus on the Logistics 4.0 call for projects

The call for “Logistics 4.0” projects is part of this acceleration strategy. The development of e-commerce, societal changes, the Covid 19 crisis have really impacted the logistics sector in France. In order to regain the lead, it is imperative to improve the competitiveness of goods transport for every kilometre travelled in France. According to the government, this is the only way to boost the economic development of companies in trade, industry, ports, etc. The expected projects concern digitalization solutions, the entire logistics chain is considered, such as transport, storage or packaging.

The government states that it is a question of “automating the maritime and river segments of logistics corridors, as well as airport platforms and their runway equipment for example, and integrating the segments into an overall concept of end-to-end multimodal logistics chain automation”.

The following types of projects are expected, as it is possible to include several activities in one project:

• Development of technological bricks, up to a proof of concept;
• Development of a global innovative system or integrating innovative bricks, up to an industrial demonstration phase;
• Experimentation of an innovative system within the framework of a territorial demonstrator making it possible to validate the technical and economic relevance of the solution in representative use.

Translated from Focus sur la stratégie d’accélération “Digitilisation et Décarbonation des Mobilités” et de l’appel à projets “Logistique 4.0”