Luxembourg’s automotive campus aims to drive Europe’s mobility future

As a small country, Luxembourg can’t lead the world in everything – but it also can’t put all its eggs in one basket. To this end, the country has identified key areas of interest where it hopes to take a leading role within Europe and further afield. Three of these areas – automobility, biotech and space – are the stars of their own dedicated “campuses”.

The Luxembourg Times asked leaders from all three sites why the special focus matters and what they hope to achieve. First up is the automotive campus in Bissen.

The Technoport incubator at the campus was inaugurated in December 2024 and opened fully in March 2025 © Photo credit: Chris Karaba

Whether for its free public transport, having one of the longest airport runways in Europe and the continent’s biggest cargo airline, or for its cheap petrol and trimodal river port on the Moselle, Luxembourg already has a big reputation for mobility. The automotive campus doubles down on this ongoing success, its leaders hope.

“Automotive is one of those industries at the moment that is being transformed from top to bottom,” said Jean Schiltz, Director for Automotive & Smart Mobility at the Ministry of the Economy.

“In the past we had quite a lot of automotive suppliers, tier one suppliers, and we still cherish them and we want them to thrive. But we see also opportunity now with new entrants in the market,” he said. The key is getting them to choose Luxembourg over one of the more established hubs in Europe.

“We invested in digital infrastructures,” Schiltz said. “We are investing a lot in charging infrastructure, in decarbonisation. Suddenly, when you look at the references for that in Europe, we are quite well positioned. Our intention is not to attract a new car manufacturing site, we wouldn’t probably have the space to do that, but it is to bring the added value activities related to the automotive and mobility sector to Luxembourg.”

Exclusive club

The automotive campus exists on 14 hectares of land that formerly housed a Goodyear factory in Bissen (not to be confused with the tyre manufacturer’s site that is still very much open just down the road in Colmar Berg).

Special campuses are not one-size-fits-all. In some ways, the word is an umbrella term, as the automotive, space and health campuses bear little resemblance to one another.

“From the Ministry of the Economy side, the [automotive] campus is what we define as being a Zone Spéciale, so it’s an economic interest zone with a special purpose,” said Schiltz.

“Within that campus you have different buildings, IEE being the first building on the campus, then the incubator and now there is Goodyear building their presence as well,” Schiltz said – adding that there are “still quite a lot of spots at the moment […] and we are in discussions with other companies that wish to set up shop there.”

To get space, companies need to be focused on research and development rather than manufacturing, crafts or trade. Small-scale, pilot manufacturing is allowed, but the focus of the campus is laboratories and other R&D. At its heart, there is the automotive incubator, to house and nurture start-ups. The incubator is managed on behalf of the ministry by incubator Technoport.

“We have accepted now six companies. There are two that joined physically, and the other ones should come in before the end of September,” said Diego De Biasio, CEO of Technoport. The first two companies employ two people each – “typical start-up companies”, De Biasio said – adding that the target is 15 to 20 people working there by the end of the year.

The automotive campus is not widely publicised and does not, for example, even have a website. Site managers prefer direct negotiation with companies in the sector about the potential for land-use rights, Schiltz said. It’s not invite-only, exactly, but Schiltz says it is an exclusive club. Of particular interest are companies interested in transport digitalisation and/or decarbonisation.

It is fair to call the automotive campus a slow-burn project.

From the inauguration of the Technoport incubator in December: (left to right) Erez Arye, Head of Mobility and Automotive sector at Technoport; Lex Delles, minister of the Economy, SMEs, Energy and Tourism; Diego De Biasio, CEO of Technoport; David Viaggi, mayor of Bissen. © Photo credit: SIP

Goodyear decided over a decade ago it was going to close its tyre wire plant, with the government committing to buy the site in 2016 for its automotive campus idea.

Pioneer partner IEE moved in in 2019 (30 years after the Luxembourg company was first founded). IEE built its brand on in-car sensors, including for airbags, and those that bleep when seatbelts are not being worn. Heavily R&D focused, it is increasingly concentrating on self-driving vehicles today.

Goodyear is returning in the form of a new R&D facility at the site, relocating 350 non-manufacturing roles by the end of 2026 with more to follow. “And we are in negotiation with two or three, depending on the maturity level, other tenants that are interested in joining the campus,” Schiltz said. Then, in December 2024, the incubator was inaugurated. It properly opened in March this year.

Benefits of togetherness

Technoport at its sites in Esch-sur-Alzette and Foetz hosts companies in anything from ICT, space and mobility to environmental technologies, material science and more.

For its sector-specific branch in Bissen, De Biasio’s first question for the economy ministry was what counts as automobility?

The final definition was “everything which helps to move something from A to B. Then, going into more detail about sustainable mobility, you have specific applications that can help to decarbonise the sector or make it more efficient. These can be hardware-related solutions, but also software-related solutions,” De Biasio said.

With 60-65% of new start-ups coming to Technoport from outside Luxembourg, the broad approach suits the incubator, its CEO said, as it is already exploring synergies with sectors as diverse as space and Fintech.

Some specific areas of research, Schiltz said, include AI in transport, data science (Luxembourg’s supercomputer is just down the road), and hydrogen – for example how to develop injectors for hydrogen combustion engines, how to improve existing hydrogen fuel cell engines, and how to make hydrogen storage cheaper and easier. New and better batteries for EVs are also top of the research wish list, as well as more flexible charging.

One of the existing stars of Luxembourg’s mobility scene is New Zealand’s Ohmio, which has its European headquarters in Bissen, in part thanks to its partnership with the CFL to operate self-driving buses in Belval. Opening before the incubator launch, Ohmio found space with IEE, because it was decided early on that it should be in Bissen, rather than anywhere else.

Ohmio works with the CFL on autonomous buses. © Photo credit: Lux Ewan

Spilling over

The campus is physically limited by its 14-hectare site, which coordinators hope will reach capacity sooner or later. “The good thing is that it’s not standalone,” Schiltz said. “This Zone Spécial is surrounded by a regional activity zone where there is a great number of actors in the field of automotive and transport. There are car garages with whom we have very good relationships and where we are looking at opportunities to also jointly develop innovation.”

It makes sense for an automobility campus to be well-connected, Schiltz notes. A mobility management study with the Bissen local authority anticipates as many as 10,000 extra people at the campus and surrounding areas in the coming years, and asks how to move them by bus and with rail links through Mersch and/or Colmar Berg.

The campus is particularly proud of its car park, however: “It used to be that you would tell a company, ‘here is your parcel, you can build your building and your factory, and then part of your plot is also all the open-air parking’. Obviously, with land scarcity and the need to use land more efficiently, we are now looking into building in height,” Schiltz said.

The campus therefore built one of Luxembourg’s most high-tech car parks. It is fully modular, and able to be expanded as needed, or even repurposed as offices, and eventually recycled when the campus’ players succeed in their mission and people stop using private cars.

Six modular floors can accommodate up to 500 cars and nine motorcycles. © Photo credit: Frank WEYRICH

Competitive cooperation

Bissen, and Luxembourg, are not islands, Schiltz says, which mean trying to create the future of mobility requires collaboration.

“There are two levels of cooperation you can strive for when you look at such an economic area. It’s the national one – and here we have had very productive exchanges with Luxinnovation and what they have been doing making collaborations more efficient national-wise between corporates and start-ups – and then in our strategy as an incubator, as Technoport, we are increasingly looking to build European corridors,” De Biasio said.

“We will not be able to recreate everything here in Luxembourg, in terms of environments, of ecosystems, etc. We need to build these corridors to make sure that if we have these international companies coming to Luxembourg, we can sell not just Luxembourg, but Europe, as a playground,” he said.

“We have been building up these connections pretty fast over the last six months, to be able to have an official offering beginning in 2026 so that we can have a nice service offering for the companies that are joining the campus which goes beyond just saying we have a nice facility,” he said.