This week, the CCAM-ERAS consortium gathered in Brussels for its final event: a day that marked both the conclusion of a multi-year European research journey and the beginning of a much larger conversation about how automated mobility will reshape our societies, economies, and institutions.
We at SAAM joined the project at a later stage but were proud to contribute meaningfully, particularly through our work preparing a training seminar for Swiss public authorities on CCAM governance. It was genuinely moving to receive recognition from the consortium lead for how we integrated into the project and helped move things forward. That kind of acknowledgement, at the close of something this ambitious, means a great deal.
The day unfolded in two distinct registers. The morning was intimate and candid, around thirty participants, mostly project partners, engaged in open discussions, workshops, and a final round of knowledge exchange. It had the warmth of a group that has worked closely together, debated ideas, challenged each other, and ultimately built something real. The afternoon opened to a broader audience of around fifty, bringing in external voices and perspectives through panels and presentations. More formal in tone, but no less engaging, and in many ways richer for the diversity of viewpoints it introduced.
Here is what stayed with us.
Automation Will Transform Jobs, Not Eliminate Them
One of the clearest messages of the day: CCAM is not primarily a story of job destruction. It is a story of transformation. At a time when Europe faces a severe and growing driver shortage, automated vehicles are increasingly being discussed not just as a disruption to labour, but as a potential solution to it.
That said, the picture is uneven. In warehousing, the transition could be significant: with projections of up to one million job losses by 2050 under high-adoption scenarios, though this is expected to level out over fifteen to twenty years. In passenger transport, the story is different: high adoption could actually create net job gains of over 80,000 positions, driven by demand in technology production and supply chains.
The macro-level numbers may look manageable on a European scale. But the disruption will be acutely felt in specific corridors, logistics hubs, and local communities. This asymmetry between aggregate data and local reality was a recurring theme throughout the day.
Three Roles That Will Define the Transition
Among the many emerging functions discussed, three stood out as particularly critical for the near-term future of CCAM:
Remote Operations Specialists: those responsible for supervising autonomous fleets and managing exceptions in real time. This role is demanding in ways that go far beyond traditional transport operations. Experts compared it to air traffic control: high stakes, high cognitive load, requiring both technical fluency and rapid decision-making under pressure.
Policy and Regulation Officers: the professionals who must navigate fragmented legal landscapes across jurisdictions, reconcile EU frameworks with national and regional realities, and ultimately create the conditions under which CCAM services can be safely deployed at scale. This is the role SAAM’s training seminar was specifically designed to support.
Customer-Facing Roles: perhaps surprisingly, human presence in the passenger experience remains essential, particularly for elderly users, people with disabilities, and anyone who still expects a degree of human authenticity and assistance in public transport. Technology alone cannot yet meet these needs.
Looking further ahead, experts noted a deeper shift: as AI absorbs more of the technical and troubleshooting functions, the workforce of the future will need to invest more heavily in ethics, critical thinking, and design thinking. The human contribution evolves rather than disappears.
Regulation: The Bottleneck Nobody Can Afford to Ignore
Regulatory fragmentation remains one of the most significant barriers to scaling CCAM across Europe. A concrete example surfaced in discussions: a vehicle certified in Sweden may not be recognised in Germany. For technology that is, by nature, cross-border, this is not a minor inconvenience, it is a structural obstacle.
The call for EU-wide harmonisation was strong and consistent. Moving beyond isolated pilots toward genuine large-scale deployment requires common frameworks for testing, certification, liability, and operational oversight. Without this, Europe risks remaining a continent of promising experiments rather than a leader in deployed automated mobility.
On the planning side, cities were encouraged to step into the role of orchestrators, using public procurement as a lever to ensure that CCAM services genuinely serve societal goals: sustainability, affordability, and inclusion. The technology is not neutral. How it is procured and governed will determine whose lives it improves.
SAAM’s contribution to this conversation, through a modular training programme covering liability, infrastructure, and public trust, designed specifically for Swiss policymakers, was one concrete step in this direction.
Public Trust Cannot Be Engineered, It Must Be Earned
One moment from the afternoon panels stood out. A speaker from Uber remarked that she was glad, for once, to be at an event that was about more than technology and innovation, an event genuinely focused on people and the societal dimensions of automated mobility. Coming from a prominent player in the ride-hailing and mobility industry, that observation felt significant. It reflected something broader in the room: a sense that the conversation around CCAM is maturing, and that the field itself is starting to ask different, harder questions.
The societal acceptance findings presented were honest about a persistent gap. Research shows that younger, digitally native users are generally enthusiastic about autonomous mobility and willing to accept minor inconveniences for its benefits. Older users and those with specific accessibility needs often feel differently, less out of irrational fear than from legitimate unmet needs: physical help with boarding, reassurance, human presence.
The shift underway in the field is away from “pushing technology” toward genuine co-creation, involving communities, marginalised groups, and end users in the design of services from the start. This is not just an ethical imperative. It is a practical one: services designed without their users rarely succeed at scale.
Cultural context matters too. Acceptance of automated systems varies significantly across countries and communities. A one-size-fits-all approach to public communication is unlikely to work.
CCAM Is a System Challenge, Not a Technology Challenge
Perhaps the most important conclusion of the day and of the project as a whole, is this: the barriers to CCAM deployment are not primarily technical. The vehicles can function. The systems can operate. What is not yet ready, in many cases, is the institutional infrastructure surrounding them.
Regulatory capacity, workforce readiness, data governance, public trust, multimodal integration: these are the real frontiers. CCAM-ERAS has spent several years mapping them, developing tools, producing guidance, and building the professional communities that will need to navigate them.
The project ends officially in July. But the work it represents, building the human and institutional foundations for the future of mobility, is only accelerating.
SAAM is proud to have been part of CCAM-ERAS. We look forward to continuing this work with our partners, Swiss authorities, and the broader European mobility community.
Funded by the European Union, with support of the State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation SERI. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union.
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