Within EIT Urban Mobility, cities are our driving force and enabler of faster adoption of innovation. To harness the wider city innovation capacity and ensure innovation closer to citizens, we developed the Rapid Application for Transport (RAPTOR) programme.
Each city, supported by technical and business advisors, selects the most promising solution to receive a financial award, to advance the proposal to a solution to be tested in the city within five months. For the Innovation Programme of EIT Urban Mobility, agile entrepreneurial innovation based on challenges with rapid development timelines closer to citizens and in a defined location, is a powerful tool in our innovation agenda.
It provides space for lateral thinking beyond our own networks. In 2024, 13 cities/municipalities from different parts of Europe will be selected to implement a RAPTOR pilot on their premises. In total 44 mobility challenges could be addressed in 38 cities in over three years.
RAPTOR as an agile innovation Call for Proposals, is compatible with and complements our traditional larger-scale projects funded in the EIT Urban Mobility Business Plan. Moreover, the internal competition in RAPTOR both promotes the wider urban mobility agenda and draws cutting-edge innovators/SMEs into our community.
With the new edition of the RAPTOR programme in 2024, EIT Urban Mobility will select up to 13 projects from across Europe to develop solutions to niche mobility challenges. Existing documentation and lessons learned from RAPTOR’s previous editions will be key in ensuring an acceleration of innovation in cities, closer to citizens and closer to the innovation’s edge.
We look forward to seeing exactly what our cities, partners, start-ups & SMEs can achieve under this successful agile innovation set-up.
Call Main Features
| Call for proposals: Main features | |
| Key dates of the Call calendar1 | – Call opening: 29 February 2024 – Call closing (submission of completed application): 6 May 2024 at 17:00 CET – Eligibility and admissibility check: End of May 2024 – Evaluation of proposals: May-June 2024 – Panel hearing: June 2024 – Communication of results: July 2024 – Tentative start of the projects: August 2024 |
| Total estimated EIT Funding allocated to this Call | Up to €520,000 (a lump sum of €59,500 per project, of which €40,000 is refunded as EIT funding and €19,500 is co-funding) |
| Project duration | RAPTOR projects will last from August to December 2024. |
| Submission portal | EIT Urban Mobility AwardForce |
| List of documents to be submitted | – Application form (available on the AwardForce platform) – Legal incorporation documents and VAT number – SME Pitch Deck |
| List of documents to take into consideration | – Call Manual (amended on 29 April 2024) – Guidelines for Applicants – EIT Urban Mobility Strategic Agenda 2021-2027 – Eligibility of expenditure – Appeal procedure – Template of the Financial Support Agreement (FSA) – Project Implementation Handbook – Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement – RAPTOR 2024 City Challenges (Annex II of the Call Manual) |
| Short summary of the topics to be addressed | Each city has issued a City Challenge, found at www.raptorproject.eu and in Annex II, highlighting their niche city mobility challenges and information necessary to assess their issue and location. |
| Evaluation criteria | Phase 1: Quality evaluation – Strategic fit – Excellence, impact, and implementation Phase 2: Panel hearings – Results of the hearing – Portfolio fit |
Info sessions and contact details
To help applicants with the preparation and submission of their proposals, EIT Urban Mobility will host one call launch information session as well as two live Q&A online. These online information events will focus on the call content, the challenges, the submission and evaluation procedures, and the financial aspects. These three events will be recorded and made available on the EIT UM YouTube and the RAPTOR Project website in the News section.
Please find the calendar of events and the link to register in the table below:
| Type of event | Topic covered | Date and time (CET) | Access to platform |
| Webinar | Call info session | 5 March 2024 11:00 to 12:30 am CET | Watch the recording |
| Webinar | Live Q&A – Challenge description (first half) | 6 March 2024 11:00 to 12:30 am CET | Watch the recording |
| Webinar | Live Q&A – Challenge description (second half) | 7 March 2024 11:00 to 12:30 am CET | Watch the recording |
In parallel to the call information sessions, all applicants may contact EIT Urban Mobility to resolve any concerns or doubts about the general/technical procedures and call content. These are the key contact details of the EIT Urban Mobility team for questions related to this call:
| Type of contact | |
| EIT Urban Mobility Agile Innovation Team | [email protected] |
