At EIT Urban Mobility (EIT UM), our mission is to accelerate change towards a sustainable mobility model for liveable urban spaces. All our activities serve the three societal impact goals of improving quality of life in cities, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and creating jobs that strengthen the European urban mobility sector. The Business Plan (BP) 2023-2025 is the main tool to drive forward the implementation of our Strategic Agenda 2021-2027. The activities described in this BP are oriented along three intervention areas: bringing talent to business, bringing innovations to the market, and bringing startups to scale. In line with these, this BP aims to leverage on the new partnership model introduced in 2022 which prioritises openness and accessibility of the network to reach impact goals with a strong community of over 200 active partners per year. Nine Challenge Areas stemming from city challenges are prioritized within this BP to provide topical direction and enable the highest innovation potential with maximum societal, ecological, and economic impact. In parallel to delivering on impact, we aim to boost our programme elements towards becoming financially sustainable. After testing various revenue mechanisms in 2021 and 2022, we are putting a stronger focus on equity as a substantive revenue stream. Furthermore, partnership growth will be boosted across all regions and with a focus on a steep growth of participating SMEs. Finally, alternative funding sources such as bidding for EU and national funding will be ramped up, and private sponsors for pilots will be attracted. Overall, the BP2023-2025 takes a substantial step on EIT UM’s path towards becoming a social impact investor. It fosters both – efficiency in the delivery of the Financial Sustainability strategy as well as the creation of social impact through strong efforts in implementing the EIT and KIC Impact Frameworks – and by that guides EIT UM towards achieving our mission.

EIT-H2Cities is a XKIC collaboration driving industry-led systemic innovation for the uptake of hydrogen (H2) applications in mobility. EIT UM, EIT-M and CKIC will collaborate with industry actors to create Hydrogen Living Labs in two RIS cities. Together with the local community, innovators will test new products and changes in the energy chain. Hereby, EIT-H2Cities will break the circular conundrum of high production cost, low demand, no infrastructure, and address cities lack of capacity to build a replicable roadmap for local authorities looking to integrate hydrogen into their net-zero strategies. On budgetary division, in EIT-H2Cities the three KICs aim to consume less than 20% of the total costs. Defined innovation partners cover 48% of total costs and new legal partners will cover 32% of total costs. The decision to have legal partners within the XKIC is innovative in itself but also drives up co-financing and ensures city and industry full engagement in the initiative with a higher likelihood of financial success. Furthermore, EIT-H2Cities will build on programmes such as the Mission Platform and aims to become an umbrella association for wider engagement beyond the project lifespan, including for example district heating systems and local generation and storage. Our open partnership model will deliver EIT core KPIs on marketed innovation and SME/ Start-ups created, while a commercial pipeline and city replications will result from the experience of EIT-H2Cities. Dissemination, communication and exploitation activities will aim at inspiring follower cities and exposing citizens to the benefits of H2 applications in the mobility sector. Overall, EIT-H2Cities is a unique opportunity for a highly relevant XKIC that responds to community needs and enables EU companies to gain skills, capacity and market share in a rapidly growing economic sector.