The Hi-Drive consortium gathered in Wolfsburg, Germany, on May 11-12, 2022 for the sucessfull technical kick-off of the four-year project. More than 140 participants joined the meeting committing to demonstrating in large-scale trials the robustness and reliability of CAD functions: The focus will be on testing and evaluating a variety of functionalities, from motorway chauffeur to urban chauffeur, in diverse scenarios with heterogeneous driving cultures across Europe.

Co-funded by the European Commission, the 40 project partners – composed of OEMs, automotive suppliers, research institutes, associations, traffic engineering, deployment organisations and mobility clubs – will demonstrate their commitment to advances the European state-of-the-art of automated driving from SAE L3 ‘Conditional Automation’ further up towards SAE L4 ‘High Automation’. In doing so, Hi-Drive will address a number of key challenges which are currently hindering the progress of developments in vehicle automation. The ambition is to considerably extend the operational design domain (ODD) from the present situation.

• Create, harmonise and manage a Europe-wide testing and demonstration environment for high automation.
• Define and implement Technology Enablers technologies, targeting defragmentation and extension of the ODDs for different automated driving functions and traffic contexts.
• Implement, adapt and further develop an already proven common testing methodology across all test sites for high-automation.
• Test and demonstrate the functionality of high automation vehicles in demanding traffic scenarios across Europe.
• Investigate user reactions, interactions, understanding and attitudes towards high-level automation.
• Evaluate the project’s impacts ranging from single-user behaviour to a societal level.