"Electromobility Week 2021" Draws Record Number of Participants
The chair "Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components" (PEM) of RWTH Aachen University brought together numerous stakeholders from science and industry digitally and on site. During the annual "Electromobility Week" in Aachen, more than 350 participants from industry and research exchanged views on the latest developments, challenges and trends along the entire e-mobility value chain.
"Achieving climate neutrality is a task for the century, but we don't have another 100 years to implement it," Professor Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, Minister for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said at the start of the event: "In order to reduce CO2 emissions, drive technologies must be put on a new footing, recycling must be improved and new mobility concepts must be developed."
The PEM chair has been working on these aspects for many years with currently around 60 researchers, more than 90 student assistants and a growing network of partners. "We have to become much faster with developments in Germany and take entrepreneurial risks if we want to play a central role in the various fields of electromobility," said PEM head professor Achim Kampker at the start of the "Electromobility Production Days" (EPT), which kicked off the "Electromobility Week". For this reason, he said, the RWTH chair he founded is establishing an "innovation chain" from basic research to large-scale production in the immediate vicinity. With Kampker's experience as co-inventor of the "Streetscooter" electric vehicle, among other things, the PEM team is active in teaching as well as in nationally and internationally funded research projects and in collaboration with industrial partners. PEM also provides a breeding ground for spin-offs and products, some of which are interconnected, such as "Velocity Aachen," "PEM Motion" or "Ducktrain".
"The state government supports the expansion of application-oriented industrial research: This is where the implementation takes place, this is where sustainable added value with new jobs can be created."
Professor Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, Minister for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
The "Electromobile Production Days" in Aachen, which PEM helped launch in 2013, have long since established themselves in the professional world. At the ninth edition, 55 presentations by high-ranking representatives from various industrial sectors focused on current and future battery and fuel cell systems, innovations in the field of electric drives and their integration in commercial vehicles, as well as sustainable production and reuse processes. In parallel, companies from the PEM network provided information about their developments, while the chair experts gave insights into their federally funded research projects. "The state government supports the expansion of application-oriented industrial research, because this is where the implementation takes place," said Pinkwart: "This is where sustainable added value with new jobs can be created." The response to this year's "Electromobility Week" means a record number of participants for the event.
Further information can be found at https://ept-aachen.de.