The performance of the road transport system needs to improve if the desired social, economic and environmental goals are to be achieved, enabled by technology, policies and infrastructure. Foresight Vehicle is primarily concerned with supporting the development of innovative and appropriate technologies that will lead to improvements in performance of the road transport system. The relationship between technology developments, system performance and trends and drivers is a fundamental aspect of the technology roadmap architecture (Figure 1).

The performance measures and targets have been themed in a similar way to the trends and drivers:

1. Social performance measures and targets relate to mobility and congestion, lifestyle and attitudes,together with health, safety and security.

2. Economic performance measures and targets relate to both business and consumer perspectives.

3. Environmental performance measures and targets relate to the overall environmental burden of road transport, global warming, pollution, energy and material waste.

4. Technological performance measures and targets relate to energy and power, electronics and control,materials and structures, together with the processes and systems that support development of these technologies. This theme is different from the others, in that it directly relates to the five technology areas considered in detail in Section 5.

5. Political performance measures and targets relate directly to Governmental policy, regulation, legislation and action in the areas of energy and CO2, transport, health and safety, and waste management.

6. System performance measures and targets relate to the road transport system as a whole, which includes consideration of the infrastructure and the level of system integration. It should be noted that performance measures and targets for the infrastructure itself are not included in this roadmap, as the focus in on road vehicles, although infrastructure developments need to advance in parallel with vehicle technologies for effective deployment.The technology roadmap builds on previous Foresight Vehicle activity. The Foresight Vehicle Strategic Plan defined a set of nine visionary ‘Beacons’ that represent integrated aspects of the future system, encompassing technology, product and market concepts, and these are described in detail in Version 1.0. These Beacons are related to road transport system performance measures and targets as defined in the Strategic Plan.

Figure 5 in Version 1.0 shows the summarised performance measures and targets. These have been reviewed in this update and a tabular format used for presentation, table 2. Additions have been made, but no information has been eliminated from that contained in Version 1.0. Blue text has been used to identify those topics considered most important by the Engineering Committee of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, acting as representatives of the vehicle manufacturers and component suppliers. Specific issues highlighted in review are included in the text.