Toyota Motor Europe is new EUCAR Member from April 2014
1st April 2014 – Toyota Motor Europe is new EUCAR Member from April 2014
The European Council for Automotive R&D (EUCAR), representing the major European automotive manufacturers in their common research activities, has confirmed Toyota Motor Europe as a new member as from 1st April 2014. This decision was confirmed recently by the EUCAR Council, comprising the senior research and advanced development executives of the European automotive OEMs.
Toyota Motor Europe joins EUCAR as its 15th member company. The 2014 Chairman of EUCAR, Nevio Di Giusto, CEO of FIAT Research Center, expressed the views of the EUCAR Council, stating “Toyota brings to EUCAR substantial European and global expertise in research and innovation, which will enhance our collaborative activities and support the competitiveness of our industry.” He added, “Toyota has made clear its commitment to participate actively in EUCAR’s strategic development and to cooperate on research and innovation projects in the European framework programmes. We look forward to working together to meet our common objectives.”
“Our EUCAR membership illustrates Toyota’s commitment to Europe and our clear intention to contribute to European R&D and innovation”, said Masahisa Nagata, Executive Vice President of Toyota Motor Europe (TME). “Both Europe and Japan play a leading role in developing policies and technologies to bring sustainable mobility to reality, and partnerships such as EUCAR are key to making further advances as an industry.”
Gerald Killmann, Vice President, R&D at TME, added: “We see EUCAR membership as a further step for Toyota’s R&D in Europe in order to contribute more strongly to technological progress, beyond today’s existing cooperation of Toyota with European universities and industry. Our engineers are excited to work with and meet the expectations of EUCAR through open collaboration.”
The research and innovation investment of European automobile manufacturers, at over €32bn per year, is the key element in ensuring the future competitiveness of the industry and the continued sustainability of road transport. EUCAR’s mission is to strengthen the competitiveness of the European automotive manufacturers through strategic collaborative research and innovation. EUCAR’s members participate in collaborative pre-competitive research and innovation for passenger cars and commercial vehicles in three “Strategic Pillar” domains: “Sustainable Propulsion”, “Safe & Integrated Mobility” and “Affordability & Competitiveness”. Their activities include the driving of strategy and assessment of the common challenges in research and innovation, communication of these challenges to EU institutions and other stakeholders and the creation of collaborative industrial projects. In particular, EUCAR’s members participate in projects funded by the EU’s Research Framework Programmes, including the Horizon 2020 programme starting this year.
Press Release: Toyota Motor Europe is new EUCAR Member from April 2014