The development of sustainable products is a basic requirement for European industries to grow in highly competitive environments. Innovation is the key challenge and must be supported with the highest priority. Such considerations fully apply to automotive industries, which are forced to develop products of increasing quality in shorter and shorter timeframes to come up with competitive pressure and conflicting demands from customers and regulatory bodies. The challenge is made even more complex by the increasing integration of mechatronic content in the vehicles and can be achieved only when engineers are able to manage this complexity in any phase of the vehicle development process from the concept stage onwards.The aim of this IAPP project is to establish a transfer of knowledge and staff between the partners’ complementary academic and industrial expertise in the relevant domains of vehicle concept modelling. Promising upfront engineering methods for active and intelligent vehicles, which are green, safe and competitive, will be developed. A systematic approach will be followed for the research development of innovative concept modelling and simulation methods, starting from the level of critical subsystems (chassis and suspensions, tire, vehicle body) up to the system-level simulation and optimization of active vehicles. The network partners will strongly benefit from the mutual exchanges of knowledge. The targeted technology and methodology outcome is perfectly aligned with the quest of European industry and academia to again take the global lead in the field of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), one of the fastest growing applied ICT fields with world-wide impact. As such, the IAPP directly contributes to achieving the objectives of the European Commission towards developing safer, greener and more efficient mobility, and will help strengthening the competitive position of the European vehicle industry in the global vehicle development market.