Winners MUBIL Mobility Awards

The ideas that are revolutionising sustainable mobility found their stage today at the MUBIL Mobility Awards, which this afternoon awarded two revolutionary ideas. The startup Novac, from Italy, won the 12,500 euros first prize, ahead of Battbelt, from Guipuzcoa, which won the 4,000 euros for second place. Both projects will also receive an additional 18,500 euros in funding for the development of their projects in collaboration with agents in the Basque Country and will become part of the MUBIL Hub, and will have a workspace for 12 months, as well as the opportunity to have their own stand at MUBIL Mobility Expo, a professional meeting point for the sustainable mobility industry, a benchmark at European level, in its 2026 edition.

Both projects, which have finally won out among the 56 applications submitted, 23 of them international, have demonstrated enormous potential to lead change in a key sector for the future. Novac's proposal is committed to implementing solutions for electric vehicle manufacturers to improve the efficiency and performance of batteries through the use of solid supercapacitors. In defending his project, Alessandro Fabbri explained that his proposal involves combining energy batteries and supercapacitors (capable of releasing all their energy in a few seconds) to obtain autonomy and power at the same time. In this way, they manage to reduce the weight and volume of the batteries, while increasing the efficiency of the system. In addition, by using solid supercapacitors, the batteries are much safer and more mouldable.

For its part, Battbelt has presented a mechanical management system for the compression of batteries capable of extending their useful life. In his presentation, Javier Zurbitu, head of Battbelt, explained the revolutionary system based on superelastic smart materials that he has devised, which allows the compression of the individual cells that make up the batteries to be kept constant, thus extending their useful life and obtaining a more accurate monitoring of the remaining useful life.

During the morning, before the awards ceremony held at Tabakalera (Donostia/San Sebastián), the two winning initiatives defended their proposals before a panel of experts along with the other four finalists; Newky (Turkey), which has devised a system that is integrated into all land vehicles and offers active protection against cyber-attacks in their environments, guaranteeing the safety of life and property; Asistobe (Norway), which has opted to use AI to accurately predict and optimise public transport services in cities based on real-time information and changing needs; Voltaage (France), which has created a web platform to optimise and automate data from thousands of electric vehicles and charging stations, maximising everything from charging infrastructure to daily maintenance; while Madrid-based startup H2drone Energy has presented an electric energy propulsion system using hydrogen fuel cells for drones capable of tripling flight time.