The automotive sector is undergoing one of the most significant transformations in its history. The rapid shift towards electric vehicles, digital diagnostics, connected mobility, and advanced driver assistance systems is fundamentally changing the skills required of technicians, maintenance workers, and engineers across Europe. Keeping pace with this transformation demands not only new training content, but also new and more flexible ways of recognising and validating the skills that workers acquire.
AutoCredify, an EU-funded project under the Erasmus+ programme, was established to respond precisely to this challenge. Its goal is to accelerate green and digital upskilling in the automotive sector through the development and piloting of micro-credentials: short, targeted, assessed and verifiable learning units that can be stacked into broader qualification pathways. As part of this work, AutoCredify has published the Good Practice Mapping Report, which provides a comprehensive overview of how micro-credentials and related training practices currently operate across Europe and internationally, and what lessons can be drawn for the automotive sector.
What the Report Set Out to Do
The Good Practice Mapping Report is the result of an extensive research exercise covering 112 training practices relevant to micro-credentials in the automotive ecosystem. The mapping spans three pilot countries, namely Spain, Finland, and Portugal, and includes an additional set of EU-wide and international examples from Ireland, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Italy, among others.
The exercise did not simply catalogue what training exists. Rather, it applied a structured analytical framework drawn from AutoCredify’s earlier methodology work to evaluate each practice across five core dimensions of a healthy micro-credential ecosystem: governance, pedagogy, assessment, quality assurance, and financial sustainability. From the 112 practices identified, 20 were selected for more detailed analysis in the report, and 10 will be the subject of in-depth case studies in the next deliverable.
Importantly, the report adopts a clear definition of “good practice” that does not require full compliance with the EU definition of micro-credentials established in the 2022 Council Recommendation. A practice was considered valuable if it demonstrated strength in one or more of the five dimensions, even where other dimensions remained underdeveloped. This approach reflects a realistic assessment of where the sector currently stands, and provides a solid basis for identifying what needs to be built, adapted, or reinforced in the pilots to follow.
What the Mapping Found
The headline finding of the report is that the automotive sector across the three pilot countries is rich in training activity, but uneven in quality and coherence. There is no shortage of short courses, certification programmes, and online modules addressing electric vehicle maintenance, high-voltage safety, ADAS calibration, and digital diagnostics. However, the mapping confirms that the majority of this provision does not yet meet the EU definition of a micro-credential. Most short courses lack formal and transparent assessment, documented quality assurance, digital verifiability, or meaningful stackability into larger qualification pathways.
Only a small number of fully aligned and interoperable micro-credentials were identified in the mapping, and these tend to originate from universities, global consortia, or sectoral alliances rather than from VET providers or private training companies. The gap between the volume of available training and the quality expected of genuine micro-credentials is one of the central challenges the AutoCredify project is designed to address.
Beyond this overall picture, the mapping reveals distinct national profiles. Spain has a modular, competence-based VET architecture that already incorporates many micro-credential features, but lacks systematic labelling, digital issuance, and interoperability for smaller learning units. Portugal has a nationally coherent qualification structure through its CNQ and UFCD system that already operationalises several core micro-credential principles, but has not yet linked this to EU-level digital infrastructure or explicit micro-credential labelling. Finland demonstrates a strong standards-based approach to safety-critical training, particularly through instruments such as the SFS 6002 electrical safety standard, but micro-credential-specific governance and digital credentialing remain at an early stage.
The international examples add further depth to the picture. Models such as the Credential As You Go ecosystem in the United States, Ireland’s nationally coordinated MicroCreds initiative, New Zealand’s NZQA micro-credential framework, and Canada’s EV technician pathways all illustrate how micro-credentials can be embedded in national qualification systems while remaining modular, industry-responsive, and financially sustainable. These examples offer valuable transferable lessons, even where direct replication in the European context would not be straightforward.
Five Dimensions, Five Findings
Across the five analytical dimensions, the mapping points to consistent patterns.
On governance, the most robust practices are those embedded in clear system-level rules and responsibilities, whether through national frameworks, sector alliances, or multi-stakeholder consortia. Fragmented provider-led initiatives, by contrast, tend to lack the coherence and legitimacy needed to generate employer trust.
On pedagogy, the strongest practices combine modularity with authentic, practice-based learning organised around real workshop workflows. This is particularly important in the automotive sector, where technicians need to demonstrate safe and effective task performance, not only theoretical knowledge.
Assessment emerges as one of the clearest dividing lines between genuine micro-credentials and generic short courses. Where assessment is competence-based, practically oriented, and linked to transparent performance criteria, the resulting credentials carry real weight with employers. Where courses rely on attendance or weakly specified theoretical tests, the value of the credential is significantly diminished.
On quality assurance, the mapping confirms that making reliability visible to external users is essential. Credentials embedded in recognised national or institutional QA systems provide learners and employers with a signal of scrutiny and standards, while fragmented private provision ecosystems often lack the transparency needed to distinguish robust training from superficial offerings.
Finally, on financial sustainability, the report highlights that funding structures can either reinforce or undermine the quality of micro-credential provision. Public subsidies that are not conditioned on assessment quality, stackability, or pathway logic risk generating a proliferation of disconnected short courses rather than coherent upskilling pathways with lasting labour-market value.
What Comes Next
The findings of this report directly inform the next stages of the AutoCredify project. The stakeholder consultations conducted under Work Package 4 will draw on the mapping to facilitate structured dialogue with employers, training providers, VET authorities, and social partners about what a credible automotive micro-credential looks like and how it should be governed. The methodological framework developed under Work Package 5 will use the mapping’s insights to design pilots that build on the strengths identified in each country while addressing the systemic gaps.
AutoCredify does not start from a blank sheet. Across Spain, Finland, and Portugal, there are strong building blocks: competent and committed training providers, nationally recognised qualification architectures, industry-driven safety standards, and a growing awareness among employers of the urgency of skills renewal in the face of technological change. The task of the project is to connect these building blocks more effectively, to raise the bar on assessment and quality assurance, and to demonstrate that trustworthy, portable, and stackable micro-credentials in automotive maintenance and repair are not only possible, but practically achievable.
The Good Practice Mapping Report is the evidence base that makes that work possible.