European Project ULTIMO held its General Assembly in Oslo – Sweden
ULTIMO project autonomous vehicles has kicked off on the roads of Oslo!
The EU-project ULTIMO seeks to set the foundations and deploy the very first economically viable large scale, on-demand and user-oriented AV public transportation services. By taking a holistic approach to AV deployment that considers all elements in a cross-sector business environment, ULTIMO wants to truly unlock the integration of AVs into cities with on-demand and door-to-door services that will allow for more sustainable, accessible and inclusive mobility.
The ULTIMO project joins 23 consortium partners from eight European countries for a period of four years. The ULTIMO project is overseen by CINEA - European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency and financed within the EU HorizonEurope framework as well as by the Suisse Secrétariat d’Etat à la formation, à la recherche et à l’innovation SEFRI.
Arthur's Legal is one of Ultimo's consortium partners and was therefore present during the 4th General Assembly of the Ultimo's Project held in Oslo last month. Funded under Horizon EU, ULTIMO seeks to deploy the first economically viable, large-scale AV public transport service. The GA in Oslo was filled with discussions and collaborative efforts alongside our partners. Among one of them was our founder and director of Arthur's Legal; Arthur van der Wees. Arthur was actively engaged during the GA and gave a keynote in the morning and an interactive workshop session during the afternoon.
The first was the '24 keynote on the Data Act and Trusted Data Sharing including a 30 minutes discussion. Data strategy in Europe will change completely with the Data Act that entered in force in January 2024. A new Digital Decade is going to start in Europe with it. With the digital, user-centred transport services Ultimo is aiming for. Arthur showed the contents of the Data Act, what opportunities the law unleashes and adviced on data strategy and design.
The second working session was about Digital Sovereignty in which Arthur had an engaging interactive conversation with the audience for about an hour.
Overall important topics discussed were the impacts of the EU Data Act and the Data Sharing/Sovereignty.
What is exactly our role in the project Ultimo?
Arthur’s Legal has been active to promote the project, its mission and objectives, and discuss the various challenges at hand, locally, nationally, within the EU, EEA, UK and the like. These including discussing with various stakeholders such as potential public sector customer/user-side, with various international industry players as well as relevant policy makers why is the uptake of autonomous transportation, logistics and operations including the related societal multi- and intermodal ecosystems (public, private or public-private) is so slow, how to shape a serious market, both for manufacturers, integrators investors, procurers, operators, customers, users and society at large, and who to kick-start or otherwise expedite these.
These also including discussing the opportunities regarding trusted data sharing, both voluntary and mandatory, also in the spirit of the intertwinedness of relevant societal challenges, the EU Data Strategy, EU Cybersecurity Strategy, Digital Decade 2030, the Common European Data Spaces concept as well as industrial data and cloud-edge computing continuum, AI on the Edge, trust principles, and related policy instruments, and potential value, co-creation, business, financial contribution and distribution models thereto.
It obviously aims to continue doing the above during the project, including the expected take-aways and lessons-learned from the project regarding strategy, ethics, policy, legal, trustworthy and otherwise serious technology, application and market uptake thereof in Europe.