In the recent times, engineering companies and transport agencies have introduced a term, future mobility, that sounds certainly promising but I am wondering what really means in practice. There are currently several definitions that change in relation to the focus they have: smarter, greener, and more connected transport technologies or reducing carbon emissions while increasing energy efficiency or boosting technological innovation or maybe all together?
As I have been involved in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for 30+ years, it is natural to make some assessments of these three decades and the amount of “real” innovation introduced in transport. Let’s immediately clarify that air and water transport belong to different categories and I am not going to talk about them, also to simplify my editorial. Sure, ITS is applied also to them, but in different ways as they don’t run on physical supports but on fluids (in physics, both air and water are considered fluids because they do not have a fixed shape of their own and tend to flow or take on the shape of the container holding them.).
The remaining two other kinds of transport are road and rail which could be ITS-interconnected, but in practice they are not. Let’s start with road transport.
In the 1990s there was a lot of effervescence in the road transport sector. It was the period when we could see innovation in car engines, in ITS applied to roads. In those days the correct term was Road Transport and Traffic Telematics (RTTT), meaning the integration of telematics and information technology into transport networks to manage traffic and optimize road mobility.
It was the period when the European Commission launched two programmes: DRIVE I (1988–1991) and DRIVE II (1990–1994). Both served as the foundational building blocks for modern intelligent transport systems in Europe and while DRIVE I focused on exploratory, theoretical research, DRIVE II was dedicated to field-testing those technologies through real-world, integrated pilots.
These activities were carried out along with other experiments of ITS applied to vehicles and concerning safety such as, for example, the ABS (Anti-Lock Braking System) and automatic recognition of road signals.
Then, we entered the 21st century and a focus on international EU road corridors was well exploited to ensure signalling and infotraffic, for example, were consistent across different countries to avoid confusing the driver. There were seven EuroRegional projects funded within the TEMPO Programme and the most famous one was SERTI (South European Road Telematics Implementation). This is an important point: the concept of “human-centred technology” is not a modern invention, but was already a focus 25 years ago.
In early 2010s the novelty of automated vehicles started gaining popularity in technical conferences. Despite it sounded very exiting, it was more theoretical, than practical, and still today – at the end of 2026 – commercial cars offer just a modest SAE-level 2 automation that allows drivers to travel on the motorway without touching the steering wheel (but they still must watch the road, see the recent Ford advert of their hands-off, eyes-on “BlueCruise”) and automatically park their car. Well, not a real revolution, is it?
In 2020s we became familiar with the term robotaxis that seem revolutionary (actually they are designed to travel driverlessly), but it still is hard to see them in Europe. The launch in London has just recently taken place by Uber and Wayve despite not being yet fully driverless, The Waymo one, expected for H1 2026 hasn’t happened yet. Robotaxis in Berlin (DE) and Zagreb (HR) have been announced, we will see.
By the way, some of you may remember that the European Commission funded a couple of projects in 2000s that included automated vehicles that could be booked via a text message (no apps, no WhatsApp in those times) and the vehicle was supposed to reach you at the address provided and carry out to your favorite destination. Afterwards, it should return to a dedicated parking space. When the projects ended, nothing commercially viable saw the light.
In the next editorials I will expand this discussion on this rather weak innovation in future mobility of the last 10-15 years (spoiler: public transport), but the question is: do future mobility and mobility of the future mean the same thing?
Stefano Mainero
EPN Consulting and EPN Consulting Research and Innovation Founder & CEO
This article was written by human beings without any use of AI whereas this time graphics displayed was generated by AI tools. EPN Consulting Ltd. copyright 2026
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