Future Mobility
The next decades will be a great challenge for motorized road traffic. Mobility on the road today depends almost 100 percent on fossil energy, which in the past allowed an enormous development, but also resulted in high CO2 emissions. To meet the net zero CO2 target, road mobility must be completely converted to renewable energy by 2050. To achieve this, we are developing new concepts based on overall energy, ecological and economic assessments.
Our goal is a comprehensive analysis of the Swiss vehicle fleet and its operation in order to determine the real CO2 emissions of the changing fleet. To this end, we develop fleet clustering and real consumption models as well as tools for the analysis of vehicle applications and we support and accompany implementation projects of industrial partners and the public sector. The mobility demonstrator will demonstrate technological solutions for fossil-free automotive applications, from photovoltaic electricity generation and battery storage to electro mobility, hydrogen production, storage, refueling for fuel cell mobility and the production of synthetic fuels for long-distance (hybrid) vehicles with internal combustion engines.
In addition to CO2 reduction and increased efficiency, automated vehicles (AD) are an important part of future mobility. A major challenge for AD vehicles is the functionality and reliability of the sensors that make the environment digitally visible to computers. Our goal is to establish an experimental research environment for autonomous vehicles. We have a vehicle equipped with appropriate sensors and a test track on the Empa campus for the experimental study of sensor behavior (e.g. detection of different materials, colors, shapes under different environmental conditions). The aim is to investigate sensor behavior and the flow of sensor data in reality and to develop new algorithms to improve the safe and robust functioning of sensors under all environmental conditions. Reliable sensor responses are a cru-cial prerequisite for the use of AD vehicles in everyday life. Our activities are closely coordinated with the Federal Roads Office (ASTRA), the Swiss authority for individual road traffic.
