E-Rescue, the EIC Accelerator and the Promise of Rescue Bus Seats

A coach can carry up to 80 passengers, and after a serious crash the emergency services can need "more than 2 h" to get the injured out, the project summary on CORDIS says. Innovation & Safety S.L., a small engineering company in Guadarrama, north of Madrid, that trades as E-Rescue, sells a kit that puts the collar and straps under every seat and lets rescuers unbolt the backrest and carry the passenger out on it. The company says this cuts rescue time "by 70%" and could halve deaths and serious injuries in bus crashes.

In the 9 January 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the European Commission selected the company's project E-RESCUE, which it lists under Innovation & Safety SL of Madrid in its list of selected companies, with no other partner. The grant was €2,262,035.13 towards a total cost of €3,231,478.75 for a project that ran from 1 May 2019 to 28 February 2022, according to CORDIS. It was grant only, and the company does not appear in the EIC Fund portfolio.

Still Selling Seats in 2026

Innovation & Safety is active. The business directory empresia lists it as "ACTIVA" in the Madrid register, with share capital of €329,327 and annual turnover "inferior a 500.000 euros"; its latest accounts on file there are for 2023. eInforma, which updated its file in September 2026, gives 5 employees and the same NIF. Neither shows insolvency proceedings.

The company's website carries a "Tarifa 2026" price list for authorised customers and a 2026 catalogue of coach seats that the kit could be retrofitted to. A page aimed at bidders for Madrid's regional bus tenders puts the price at €11,500 to €12,500 for a 55-seat coach, fitted in one day, and pitches the seats as a way to score extra points in public tenders. The same page names TIB in Mallorca (61 buses, with the operators Sagalés and Grupo Ruiz), Arriva in Galicia (15 buses) and ALSA as users, and claims a marketing agreement in Mexico. None of these operators has announced the installations itself in sources found for this article, and the Mexican deal could not be verified.

The Technology: A Stretcher Hidden Under Every Seat

The idea is older than the company. Sergio de Rico Herrero holds European patent EP 2 030 834 for a "dismantleable vehicle seat", with a 2006 priority date, granted in May 2010 with Innovation & Safety as proprietor. In 2011 Diariomotor described it as a car seat whose backrest held straps and a neck collar and split off as a stretcher; it was patented but not on sale.

The bus version, as the company describes it, has four parts: an aluminium anchoring mechanism fitted between the original seat and its frame, colour-coded immobilisation straps, a malleable collar and a compartment under the seat that holds them. Rescuers open the compartment, strap the passenger's head, neck, spine and legs to the backrest, pull an extraction strap to release the seat from its frame and carry the passenger out still seated. The CORDIS report argues that this also clears space inside the wreck for the emergency teams to work.

The conventional alternative is the rescue team's own equipment, brought into the vehicle for each victim; the CORDIS report argues that after a bus crash the key is "to have the specific medical equipment on site for all the injured, and enough space to work effectively". E-Rescue's claim of a 70% time saving, 30 minutes against 2 hours, comes from what the company calls a study with Madrid's emergency services, reported by Innovation News Network in May 2019. Its claim of more than 50% fewer deaths and serious injuries appears on CORDIS as a "potential". Neither figure has been published in a study that could be checked for this article.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

E-RESCUE was the company's second EU grant. In 2016 it received €50,000 from the SME Instrument Phase 1 for a six-month feasibility study, from March to August 2016, under the transport topic, according to CORDIS. That study still spoke of seats "of any vehicle". By 2019 the plan had narrowed to buses.

The Phase 2 project, according to the CORDIS report, was to overcome two market barriers: homologating the device for each seat model and bus model, through a universal mechanism called MEC-UNI that seat and bus makers could fit in the factory, and making the concept known and training rescue teams to use it. The objective added that the system "will move forward to the car industry too".

The only report on CORDIS is filed as the final period, October 2021 to February 2022, but its text reads like an early interim report: it says MEC-UNI is "now" being adapted to partner seat models, that COVID-19 has delayed "the first large orders that we are about to sign with 4 clients", that the company is making masks and protective screens, that E-Rescue "will be installed in more than 80 public service buses (when COVID-19 allows it)", and that 10 jobs have been created. CORDIS lists no deliverables or publications.

A fuller closing account is the company's own entry in the Commission's European Road Safety Charter. It says the company scheduled 107 homologation tests for 14 seat and bus pairs, that 5 bus manufacturers and 4 seat manufacturers offer E-Rescue as an option, that more than 120 buses carry more than 6,000 seats, that a demo bus toured 9 roadshows in Spain, France and Luxembourg, and that more than 1,000 firefighters and rescue professionals were trained. The entry names none of the manufacturers. The company's website today names one, the seat maker KIEL, as its partner for UN Regulation 80 tests.

1. Homologate MEC-UNI for factory fittingClaimed107 tests and 9 manufacturers per the company's charter entry; no manufacturer has announced it, only KIEL is named.
2. Seats in service on busesDelivered4,000 seats installed by July 2021, reported by Vivir Ediciones at a Madrid fire service drill; 80 buses in 2020 per Autopista.
3. Publicity campaign and demo busDeliveredDemo bus, roadshows, the 2020 AXA prize and drills at the FIAA bus fair in 2022 and 2024.
4. Train rescue teamsClaimedMore than 1,000 trained, per the company; drills with Madrid firefighters are reported independently.
5. Extend to carsNot achievedA prototype "safest car in the world" was shown in July 2021; no homologated car seat has been announced since.
6. Final reportingThinThe only CORDIS summary reads as a mid-project report; no deliverables are public.

On timing, the project ran 34 months. When it was announced in May 2019, Innovation News Network described a two-year project. CORDIS does not say whether the end date was extended.

What the Company Has Achieved

E-Rescue's first fleet came before the EIC grant. In July 2018 the bus operator Vigiola fitted 10 buses that carry Petronor staff, and the Spanish coach federation Confebus called the first company in Europe to adopt the system. In October 2020 E-Rescue won the AXA prize for road safety innovation of the Ponle Freno campaign, presented in the Spanish Senate; Autopista reported that 80 buses had been fitted in 2020 and more than 200 coaches were planned for 2021, and that a car with a homologated life-saving seat would be presented within six months.

In July 2021 the Madrid region's emergency agency ASEM112 held a drill with the seats at the new Alcobendas fire station, where, according to Vivir Ediciones, 4,000 seats had "already" been installed in intercity buses and a prototype of the "coche más seguro del mundo" was shown. The company kept demonstrating at Spain's bus fair: IFEMA scheduled E-Rescue rescue drills at FIAA 2022 and at FIAA 2024, on 22 and 23 October 2024. Two IFEMA press releases on FIAA 2026, held in September 2026, do not mention the company.

The counts do not line up. The company told the Road Safety Charter of more than 120 buses and 6,000 seats after the project. Its website now shows "4.000 Asientos Salvavidas instalados en 70 autobuses", the same seat number reported in July 2021. Either the post-2022 figure was too high, or the website has not been updated; no independent count exists.

The Money

The register shows a company that stayed small. Share capital rose from €20,516 to €71,516 in March 2016 and by €257,811 to €329,327 in June 2024, according to Official Gazette of the Commercial Register (BORME) entries reported by empresia. Who subscribed the 2024 increase is not public, and no funding round has been announced. The same BORME record shows a move of the registered office from Calle Santander 1 to Calle Hierbabuena 1 in Guadarrama in 2022 and an extension of the company's purpose in 2022 to the sale and licensing of trademarks and patents for road and transport safety. The company's website gives a third address, Camino de Pradovera in Guadarrama.

Why Europe Should Care

Post-crash care is one of the pillars of the EU's road safety policy. The Commission's road safety observatory notes that "about 50% of deaths from road traffic collisions occur within minutes at the scene or in transit", and that systematic training of rescue teams "may reduce the extrication time of entrapped car and truck crash victims by 40-50%". The EU's target is to halve road deaths and serious injuries by 2030; with about 19,800 deaths in 2024, the Commission said in March 2025 that most member states are not on track.

Buses are a small share of that toll, but bus crashes are mass-casualty events, and the same Commission page says it is still assessing whether to extend eCall, the automatic emergency call, to buses. No EU vehicle rule asks for rescue equipment on board, so a seat-level kit like E-Rescue's depends on operators and tender authorities choosing to pay for it.

The Verdict

Innovation & Safety has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.