25th Technical Congress - the networking platform celebrates its anniversary

Keynotes from political representatives included among others:

• Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Federal Minister of Education and Research,
• Anke Rehlinger, Prime Minister of Saarland,
• Dr. Bettina Hoffmann, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, and
• Richard Damm, President of the Federal Motor Transport Authority

Speakers from industry included among others:

• Dr. Holger Klein, CEO ZF Friedrichshafen,
• Arnd Franz, Chairman of the Management Board MAHLE Group,
• Frank Blome, CEO PowerCo SE,
• Henrik Falk, Chairman of the Board of Berlin Public Transport Company (BVG) and
• Maria Röttger, President Michelin Europe North, Michelin Reifenwerke AG & Co. KGaA.

Interview with Johannes Pallasch, spokesperson in the management team of the National Control Center for Charging Infrastructure and department head at NOW GmbH

Mr. Pallasch, in your keynote speech you spoke about the development of charging infrastructure for heavy battery-electric commercial vehicles at depots. The National Control Center for Charging Infrastructure has published the guide "Simple charging at the depot - Guide for the development of charging infrastructure for heavy commercial vehicles" under the umbrella of NOW GmbH. This guide is intended to support companies with truck fleets in their entry into electromobility and in the transformation process towards low-emission logistics. Why is the topic so important at the moment?

Most operators of depots where trucks are loaded and unloaded have to think about electrification. From a technical point of view, this is very complex because, among other things, expensive connection services are required. With this guide, we want to provide clarity about how the process works, how the need is defined, what the implementation steps are and what hurdles there are.

However, the guide does not yet solve the economic problem related to infrastructure. A uniform overall system of truck charging infrastructure must be in place if we want to get the vehicles on the road. Until we get to this point, i.e. during the scaling phase, the infrastructure will not be fully utilized - and we have to fill this gap. In this phase of transition, both electrified road freight transport and the associated charging infrastructure will develop in parallel and gradually adapt to each other.

What is the challenge here?

Often, high initial investments are required, but there are still few vehicles - so I have to spend a lot of money to buy a transformer for my future fleet, for example, but the payback will only come much later. This is a hurdle for the logistics industry, as this industry usually calculates very tightly. Attractive prices and a fair competitive landscape are key to ensuring the successful ramp-up of the overall system.

How are you and your team approaching the expansion of charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles?

We are planning a fast-charging network for trucks together with the Federal Ministry of Transport and the federal company Autobahn GmbH. It is crucial for us that we get the necessary power grid capacities and the necessary parking spaces - both of which are scarce commodities.

As part of this fast-charging network, a total of 4,200 MCS and CCS charging points will be created at 220 managed and 130 unmanaged rest areas. The tender for the unmanaged locations will begin this September. In addition, Autobahn GmbH has already placed network connection orders for the first locations. All of this enables us to quickly scale this entire system.

How can you determine where the need for charging is highest?

Our basic assumption is that the depots are basically electrified. If breaks have to be taken during the journey to recharge, there is a need for public charging infrastructure. Our planning includes all routes from the toll system so that we can digitally map and calculate how the trucks actually move today. We therefore work with real data and translate it into electric driving. This allows our team of traffic modelers to determine when and at which locations public charging is necessary and to calculate the network for this.

How do you prepare the large amount of data for power grid planning?

We have taken an important step by providing transparency with the right information. In the past, the power grid operator would say: I'm happy to expand, but for what? When, where, how, what power and what amount of energy? There was hardly any concrete information in advance, but only when someone said specifically, for example, that they wanted to set up ten fast-charging points in a certain location. However, this information usually came too late because the power grid had to be functioning in advance.

We are now filling this gap by making a basic demand plan for the whole of Germany. We can integrate the current inventory and the additional demand for the overall system into our planning tool, which contains certain assumptions and categories of the various charging station operators. This allows us to indicate very precisely at each location how many charging points are needed - and pass this information on to the power grid planners for the transport sector so that they can determine the development of the distribution networks.

What are the particular challenges when it comes to commercial vehicles?

One challenge is to set up a new, functioning competition system at these locations. The aim is to enable competition that has a positive effect on end customers. It is important, among other things, to enable good prices and to link the energy sector with the transport sector.

Interview with Dr. Corina Apachiţe, Head of the "Program for Artificial Intelligence and Key Technologies", Continental AG

Dear Ms. Apachiţe, how can Continental benefit from AI in the future?

Our aim and our vision is for all 200,000 employees to use artificial intelligence - and I believe that we are not far from this goal thanks to the possibilities offered by generative AI solutions. AI should be available as a tool for a wide range of tasks so that we can shift attention. This means that we hand over tasks that people are very good at today to the machine and we find new tasks for ourselves.

Please give an example of how AI is already being used at Continental today.

When fulfilling orders, we always start by analyzing and reading the performance specifications, which contain requirements and customer requests. There are actually hundreds of thousands of these requirements that have to be checked every day with a lot of manual effort and time pressure. Many of the requirements and clauses contained in them differ little in content from those in projects already completed - and yet they have to be read and evaluated again and again. Of course, people can do this, but in bulk it is uninteresting and quite exhausting. With the help of AI, similarities in the documents can be found and communicated, which is very practical for allowing people to focus on the essentials.

Or: We use an AI we developed ourselves, for example, to calibrate and adjust the function of door control units for anti-pinch protection. When the door control unit is integrated into the vehicle, several thousand parameters have to be specifically adapted to the various models and dependencies. Humans can do this themselves, but it is very time-consuming because many dependencies have to be taken into account. That's why we use an AI that has independently learned from the experience of our engineers and through algorithms to become better than humans. I am convinced that AI on the whole is a great support for us.

How do you and your team manage to develop creative AI solutions?

As a traditional automotive supplier, we have learned well how to establish data science and intelligent automation processes. Not all data is automatically valuable - it takes a lot of effort to generate the data and make it available in such a way that it can be used and thus becomes valuable. You have to educate employees about how valuable data can be.

We have over 1,200 AI experts on board. In 2013, we had already filed 80 patents for the use of artificial intelligence in the automotive industry. Since 2016, we have been strategically expanding our expertise in this field. In 2021, we expanded a global AI team with an AI Lab in Berlin. There, AI experts from different areas of the company work together on solutions for the mobility of tomorrow. For example, a delivery robot was developed here that can drive independently thanks to machine vision and AI applications.

In your session, you explained how AI can improve the driving experience for passengers. How does this work in practice?

We are one of the world's first automotive suppliers to integrate Continental data and artificial intelligence-based technologies from the Google Cloud directly into the high-performance vehicle computer, also known as the "Smart Cockpit." We announced the system for the first time at IAA MOBILITY 2023.

The drivers enter into a natural dialogue with the learning voice system. The basic idea is that people do not have to learn how to operate the machine, but that the machine becomes more "empathetic" and reacts appropriately to human needs in every driving situation. And a lot is possible: with a simple voice command, for example, they can ask for information about popular restaurants or sights on their route. And if the driver wants to know how to charge the smartphone in the vehicle or what the tire pressure is, the dialogue system provides assistance from the vehicle's operating manual. Our goal is to ensure that interaction in the vehicle remains up to date and that user interfaces can be controlled much more intuitively in the future.