The 39th FISITA World Congress will explore the technology, methodology and strategy of mobility, from design, through manufacture and use. By bringing together the many different disciplines of engineering innovation required for the technology of tomorrow’s mobility, the largest Congress FISITA has ever delivered will create the most significant connection opportunity for the international community of mobility engineers, today.

In exciting news for the URBANIZED consortium, Emilia Romero (Applus+ IDIADA) will represent the project at the upcoming event in Barcelona, Spain. Emilia will participate in an insightful technical session, with a focus on personal, commercial and multimodal mobility.

The abstract for Emilia’s session can be found below, alongside details of how to attend! If you are planning to visit the FISITA World Congress, be sure to stop by for an interesting and thought-provoking discussion.

Emilia will be showcasing the URBANIZED project on Tuesday 12th September at 17:00.

ABSTRACT: Starting a complete vehicle concept from zero, knowing that it must be designed only for use in urban environments, radically changes the development approach compared to the traditional methodology. The L6 and L7 category of light vehicles or heavy quadricycles is now becoming more important because of the versatility of solutions they can provide for cities, providing state-of-the-art technology, but at the same time dispensing components not necessary for their uses case. The aim is to design vehicles specially conceived for last-mile transport solutions for people and goods to achieve energy efficiency, to reduce manufacturing costs in a sustainable manner throughout the entire process up to its recyclability and to increase safety, which is also perceived as such by the end user. The URBANIZED and REFLECTIVE projects, belonging to the N1 and eL7 categories, pursue among others the above mentioned objectives. URBANIZED is a light commercial vehicle with the possibility of adopting different cargo solutions and REFLECTIVE is a multi-functional vehicle designed for the transport of people and/or last mile goods.

Even in the present day, the complexities of meeting the requirements for dual-purpose vehicle type approval remain significant, particularly for small vehicles. However, undertaking such a project creates the opportunity to expand or modify existing categories, thus broadening the scope of possibilities. A comparison between the main design targets and design of both vehicles can give us an idea of the common points and challenges that are still present today in this type of vehicles, which aim to reduce the number of private vehicles that clog up most cities.