In the last week, European leaders have made it clear: competitiveness for the bloc must quickly move from talk to real action. If Europe wants to compete, now is the time to scale its strategic technologies and embrace innovation. Regulation must help, not hinder, industrial leadership.

That makes the creation of the European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance (ECAVA) even more significant.

ECAVA is not another European discussion forum on smart mobility. It is a crucial opportunity for the European Commission to transition connected and autonomous mobility from pilot programs to binding rules, enforcement, and scaled deployment. And Einride is the only autonomous freight operator selected by the European Commission to participate in ECAVA. 

This is an opportunity to shift out of the theoretical. We can harness Europe’s ability to build socially responsible, values-driven systems and deploy them at scale. This is how we lead the transition toward an intelligent, decarbonized future for a competitive, connected European area.

Freight is the backbone of Europe’s economy and electric, autonomous freight solutions–like Einride’s–must be an integral part of this transition.

As Europe defines its next phase of industrial policy with renewed emphasis on technological sovereignty, economic resilience, and regulatory simplification, purpose-built autonomous systems are a natural industry to lead the new era.

Freight, in particular, sits at the center of that infrastructure.

Around three quarters of all goods in Europe move by road at some point. Every industrial strategy ultimately depends on the ability to move physical goods reliably, efficiently and sustainably across borders.

If competitiveness is about producing and exporting at scale, freight autonomy is foundational in addressing:

• Structural driver shortages across Europe.

• Supply chain resilience in an era of volatility.

• Cross-border interconnectivity within the single market.

Every physical good–food, medicine, industrial inputs, energy equipment and even defense– depends on road freight in one way or another. When it works, nobody notices. However, when it doesn’t, everyone feels it: in inflation, in empty shelves, in stalled production lines.

Though autonomy dominates the headlines, passenger autonomy tends to steal the focus. But autonomous freight is not the same as passenger autonomy.

Freight operates on predictable, high-utilization corridors–point-to-point, in industrial areas and ports. It is tied to real contracts and measurable demand. It interacts directly with customs, logistics platforms, and cross-border governance systems. Freight is the safest, most viable way to start deploying and scaling autonomous systems across Europe, today. 

The questions facing ECAVA are clear:

• How do we harmonize supervision models across member states?

• How do we ensure interoperability across borders?

• How do we build performance-based rules that allow scale without compromising safety?

• How do we move beyond one-off permits toward scalable and harmonized pathways?

Freight deployment exposes these issues immediately and practically, and Einride has the driving hours and commercial experience to help overcome them. 

Einride operates Level 4 autonomous heavy-duty freight vehicles on European roads with commercial customers, under permits grounded in our independently-audited and government-approved living safety case. We have driven cross-border autonomous routes between European countries, engaged in digital customs clearance, and partnered to harness autonomous charging, loading, and unloading.

Our wide network of operational stakeholders and our earned commercial experience is critical as the EU transitions from policy design to enforceable frameworks.

Europe has some of the world’s largest OEMs, ports, logistics operators, and regulatory institutions. What it now needs is alignment.

ECAVA is designed to aggregate operators, OEMs, and technology providers into one coherent policy voice toward EU institutions. This cross-sector coordination will balance regulation with innovation, ensure public bodies keep pace with the private sector and help Europe to translate its ex-ante regulatory tradition into a true competitive edge; particularly as the Commission and member states define the next phase of connected and automated mobility governance.

If Europe can make freight autonomy work predictably and safely across borders, it creates a repeatable template for scale not only across the EU, but globally.