The European Commission on Thursday gave a nod to Croatia's state aid of €179.5 million for the project of robo-taxis, which is being developed by entrepreneur and inventor Mate Rimac.

“The European Commission has approved, under EU State aid rules, a €179.5 million Croatian measure to support Project 3 Mobility LLC (‘P3M’) in the development of innovative urban mobility solutions based on fully autonomous connected driving. The project will be partly funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility (‘RRF’), following the Commission’s positive assessment of the Croatian Recovery and Resilience Plan and its adoption by Council,” the EC says on its website.

“The aim of this research and development (‘R&D’) measure is to support P3M in the development of an urban mobility service based on a fully autonomous electric vehicle (a so-called ‘robo-taxi’). The measure is part of a wider urban mobility project in Zagreb, which will enable users to combine multiple transport modes via a single integrated mobility service platform,” it says.

If successful, this urban mobility model could be expanded to other EU cities.

The aid will take the form of a direct grant to P3M, covering around 45% of the eligible costs. If the project turns out to be very successful, generating additional earnings, the beneficiary will return part of the aid received to Croatia (claw-back mechanism).

P3M has been set up by Rimac, Marko Pejkovic and Adriano Mudri.