Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI

With a view to the presentation of the Reinhard Mohn Prize 2020, Fraunhofer ISI supports the Bertelsmann Stiftung in the professional and scientific preparation of the award ceremony.

The project is based on the hypothesis that the productive combination of the two paradigms, “fostering innovative capacities and technological competitiveness” and “solving social problems through innovation”, can generate positive effects and open up new potentials. It identifies and analyzes political initiatives and approaches that explicitly strive for this integration and are capable of effectively combining them.

After two years of intensive research, five results papers have now been published.

Electric trucks can help largely to reduce CO2 emissions in the transport sector – but as they usually cover long distances their limited range is a problem that can only be solved by the deployment of a large charging infrastructure network across Europe. In this context a new Fraunhofer ISI study on behalf of the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) analyses possible charging locations for battery electric trucks on the continent. The study is based on data collected from 400,000 trucks and 750,000 stop locations in 35 European countries.

The potential of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) to reduce local pollutant and global greenhouse gas emissions strongly depends on their real-world usage and the share of kilometres driven on electricity, the so-called utility factor (UF). In the European CO₂ fleet targets, generic functions for UF of PHEV are used derived from in standardized testing procedures, or test cycles, such as the Worldwide Harmonized Light-Duty Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP). We find that the current WLTP UF parameters are too optimistic about real-world UF since long-distance driving was missing in earlier estimates, actual charging is less frequent than commonly assumed and real-world all-electric ranges are lower than WLTP ranges.

On behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) and coordinated by ifok GmbH, Fraunhofer ISI and the PTV Group have played a key role in developing the National Cycling Plan 3.0. Approaches to further promote cycling in Germany and turn the country into a nation of cyclists by 2030 were developed in a dialogue forum and incorporated into the National Cycling Plan. The plan was presented to the National Cycling Congress (NRVK) by Andreas Scheuer, the Federal Minister of Transport.