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Home / Horizon Europe / HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01-10

Autonomous Drive Ambition Cities (IA) - Apply AI

Announced, not yet open · HORIZON Innovation Actions · HORIZON-BRIDGING-2027-01-10

Next cut-off
16 Feb '27
in 138 days
Per grant
€15M
the call's own average
Grants expected
1
projects that will be funded
Funding rate
70%
the rest is your own money

In context of Horizon Europe

This grant€15M
The track runs to the largest grant in Horizon Europe (€100M). The median across the 359 calls we publish is €5.8M, this one is above it.

What this call funds

Expected Outcome:

Development and demonstration of AI-enabled electric autonomous mobility services (level 4) in urban traffic, improving safety, sustainability, data sharing and commercial scalability across cities, through a large-scale demonstrator integrating 5 - 7 co-ordinated city pilots in 5 or more Member States or associated countries including at least one cross-border pilot between adjacent cities - to bring near-to-market autonomous driving technologies into real operations:

  • Delivery on the Apply AI Strategy flagship action “Autonomous Drive Ambition Cities” by bridging the gap between high technical maturity and sustainable commercial deployment in cities.
  • Strengthened competitiveness of European base vehicle manufacturers, AD technology stack providers, mobility service brokers, and mobility service operators through real-world deployment opportunities as addressed by the European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance (ECAVA), in particular its working group on Autonomous Driving deployment.
  • Safer, more sustainable and accessible urban mobility through the integration of electric autonomous vehicles.
  • Demonstration of scalable autonomous mobility services and vehicles in real-traffic urban environments using mature autonomous driving technologies.
  • Improved access to and secure sharing of data as well as AI models and tools to support the development, testing, validation and safe operation of autonomous driving systems.
  • Demonstration of a scalable, future-proof supporting infrastructure capable of delivering all required services, ensuring operational continuity, safety, and the seamless scalability of autonomous mobility deployments.

Trimmed here, the full scope, expected outcomes and award criteria are on the official topic page ↗.

What applying costs you

ItemEstimateNote
Drafting effort6–8 weekssingle submission
Partner search4–8 weeksruns in parallel, and it is the part that slips
Your own money€6.4M30% of project cost, over the project's life
Time to first payment6–9 monthscut-off → evaluation → grant agreement

These are Bemzu's estimates from the call's structure (the number of stages and whether a consortium is required) not figures published by the Commission. Only the co-financing share is read from the call itself.

Where these conditions come from

Two kinds of row. Most are the sentence we read the condition from, quoted out of the call itself. Some say plainly that they are not a quotation but the programme's own rule for this type of action, the EU portal publishes a table of contents where the conditions should be, so for a Research and Innovation Action the rate comes from the rulebook rather than from the fiche.

ConditionQuoted from the call, or the rule behind it
Consortium sizeNot quoted from this call — Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are at least three independent legal entities from three different Member States or Associated Countries, at least one established in a Member State.
Funding rateNot quoted from this call — Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are funded at 70% of eligible costs for profit-making organisations, and 100% for non-profit legal entities — the rate shown here is the one that applies to a company.
MaturityTechnology Readiness Level - Technology readiness level expected from completed projects Activities are expected to achieve TRL 8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

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