With the release of 10.4 million Euros from the COMET program by Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs Margarete Schramböck and Federal Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology Leonore Gewessler, seven new top research projects are now starting that have great potential for Austria’s economy. Together with contributions from countries and participating partners, the projects have a total volume of over 37.5 million euros.

The thematic priorities of the newly approved projects are in the areas of intelligent production technologies, mobility and energy / environment.

Of the seven projects, the province of Styria is involved in 6. VIRTUAL VEHICLE participates in 3 of those COMET projects:

„Rail4Future – Railways for Future: Resilient Digital Railway Systems to enhance performance“ – ÖBB-Infrastruktur Aktiengesellschaft, Wien

„CARpenTiER – Modelling, Production and further Processing of Eco-Hybrid Structures and Materials“ – Weizer Energie- Innovations- Zentrum GmbH, Weiz

„SafeLIB – Safety Aspects of Lithium-Based Traction Batteries Including the Qualification for Second Life Applications“ – Technische Universität Graz – Institut für Fahrzeugsicherheit, Graz

Federal Minister Margarete Schramböck comments: “COMET is a successful model that enables domestic companies to become more competitive overall and to play an important role internationally in the future. We enable high-risk research at the highest level with the aim of quickly translating these research results into concrete applications and products.”

COMET is managed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK) and the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs (BMDW). The Austrian provinces support COMET with additional funds.