Sustainable, individual and autonomous - in the NeMo.bil project, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) is funding the development and testing of a mobility system with cooperating vehicles for "individualized public transport". Parliamentary State Secretary Michael Kellner has now presented the consortium, which consists of 20 partners, with the funding decisions amounting to 17.1 million euros. This was followed by an exchange of ideas with Minister Robert Habeck. This means that the Neue Mobilität Paderborn e.V. association, which was founded in 2022, has also reached another milestone as a partner in the project.
The aim of the three-year research project is to develop an innovative mobility system based on swarm intelligence. This system enables individualized public transport, which should also be affordable for municipalities in rural areas. To this end, data-based solutions and autonomous driving are being combined with a new vehicle system. The latter consists of autonomous ultra-light vehicles ("NeMo.Cab") that pick up individual passengers and connect and disconnect from towing vehicles ("NeMo.Pro") on core routes.
Parliamentary State Secretary Michael Kellner emphasized: "NeMo.bil adds a new concept to mobility. A system is being developed and tested for rural areas that will enable individual mobility to be designed sustainably and in line with demand in the future. This will merge public and private transportation in Germany as an industrial and research location on the basis of fully automated driving. One success factor is the scalability of the concept. It must therefore be possible now to link the research project with a broad-based development and implementation initiative. We will also support the initiators of the mobility concept politically in this challenge over the next few years."
Project initiator Prof. Dr. Thomas Tröster, holder of the Chair of Lightweight Automotive Design at Paderborn University, made it clear: "In complete contrast to previous approaches, the new system will require two different vehicles. The reason for this lies in the extremely high energy and resource efficiency that we want to achieve. It will therefore offer significant cost advantages over current public transport and offer the same comfort features as today's cars. He thanked the Westphalia Foundation, whose funding had made a significant contribution to setting up the consortium structures required for this innovative project.
Consortium leader Marcus Zwick, Managing Director of INYO Mobility, explained: "We are creating a demand-oriented, flexible and sustainable transportation system for all people with and without a driving license. We want to implement the project result sustainably and scale it up on a large scale". Cristina Brandtstetter from the FIWARE Foundation emphasized: "A digital platform is a key element in the realization of NeMo.bil. It can ensure the intensive use of data on traffic areas and vehicles and at the same time open up new value-added structures".
"Neue Mobilität Paderborn has the potential to become a nationwide pioneer for ecologically sustainable and socially just local transport," explained Dr. Carsten Linnemann, member of the Bundestag, who successfully lobbied for the funding in Berlin. "The strong community with many partners from business, science and our municipalities makes Neue Mobilität Paderborn unique," said the Deputy Chairman of Neue Mobilität Paderborn e.V., District Administrator Christoph Rüther. The Neue Mobilität Paderborn e.V. association aims to support the transport and energy transition with future-oriented mobility. The Paderborn region is particularly suitable for testing and implementation because more renewable energy is generated here than is consumed. The BMWK-funded NeMo.bil project with a total volume of 30 million euros plays an important role in this context.
The following 20 partners form the consortium for the implementation of the NeMo.bil project: Aspens GmbH, AVANCO Composites GmbH, BULIGHT GmbH, CADFEM Germany GmbH, CP Tech GmbH, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), dSPACE GmbH, FIWARE Foundation e.V., HOLON GmbH, INYO Mobility GmbH, LIA GmbH, Neue Mobilität Paderborn e.V., PHOENIX CONTACT E-Mobility GmbH, Poppe + Potthoff GmbH, Reisewitz GmbH & Co. KG, Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences, Paderborn University, Berlin Science Center and Dortmund University of Technology.
Further information: www.nemo-bil.de
