Thilo Roth – From Mobility Thinking to Vehicle Thinking

From Mobility Thinking to Vehicle Thinking

This is a condensed version of the keynote address by Prof Thilo Roth presented in the afternoon of Day 2 of the conference, the presentation was almost an hour long.

Professor Thilo Röth, has been a professor at FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences in the Department of Aerospace Engineering since January 2001 and has headed the Automotive Technology Laboratory (ATL) since 2007. He is a member of the European Centre of Mobility (ECSM) at FH Aachen, chairman of the board of CAR e.V. (euregional cluster based in Aachen) as well as shareholdermanaging director of ACA-Invest GmbH. For more than 20 years, his fields of activity have been located between science and entrepreneurship. In addition to a large number of research projects in lightweight vehicle construction, Professor Röth has been researching the mobility of the future for more than 10 years. In addition to the project SkyCab, his projects include “ShareEuregio” (crossborder car sharing with electric vehicles and eBikes) and the Humanhybrid (the pedelec car). Prof Roth started at Ford and worked until 1988 on crash worthiness. He was also the founder of a company that focussed on lightweight structures, vehicle concepts working with such notable companies as Porsche, Mercedes and Ferrari until 2018. Professor Thilo Roth travelled all the way from Germany to present at APAC21 and so in his presentation relied upon German figures and statistics but that in no way detracted from his presentation. “I’m a car guy. I mean, I know the German government wants to get us all bicycles and I say no. I think we can do it differently” Prof Roth emphasised. On one side there is energy on the other side we have to have a change in mobility thinking he said.To get to a sustainable future we have to bring these two worlds together. And in the future, there are new transport possibilities. He said that in Germany there is a high motivation to get away from the current dependency on traditional fuels. “In 2008 I had a CO2 footprint of 25 tonnes, but the good news is I’m now down to 16 tonnes,” Prof Roth explained but then added that he wanted to get down to two tonnes. Ten years ago, in Germany there were 41.7 million cars for 83 million people and now the country sits at 48 million cars and Prof Roth said he was surprised that the numbers were rising but said that in the future he is sure they will drop especially because of a change in mobility behaviour. But he then asked: “What is the perfect mobility?” He jokingly answered with ‘beam me up Scotty’ from Star Trek. Since that is still not a viable offering, he described the various personal and public transportation options available. “So, now the question is, what is better individual transportation or public transportation?” asked Prof Roth. “I still think it’s worth fighting for individual transportation. The only thing is we have to make it sustainable, and we have to keep it affordable.” When you want to get from A to B, Prof Roth said the journey starts in your brain. First you look at how far, then how fast you need to get there, how much will it cost and then sustainability, is it safe, is it comfortable and private, do I get wet and believe it not excitement. Now these aspects relate to the majority of people however, their importance changes according to age and circumstance. Prof Roth explaining that for him it was very much about time and the excitement of the journey but for one of his PhD students it was very much about sustainability and cost with the other points much less important. He challenged the audience to review their priorities. “When we are designing devices for mobility, we have to consider how human beings are thinking,” he said. “The most money you’re spending is for your housing second, the most money in your life, you’re spending is for your cars. Do I really need to invest all this money all this capital in having my own car?” He then went on to explain the contemporary modes of using cars in Europe such as car sharing and free-floating where cars are kept on the street – you grab them using your mobile phone – you drive them and then leave them. Not dissimilar to the current electric scooter options in the Melbourne CBD. There is also the concept of station based vehicles where you return the car back to base and another that is basically a car share that comes with an apartment. Prof Roth then delved into detail about options for the future of mobility from Sven the car sharing vehicle, Robotaxis to Twike X and Skycab touching on mobility and sustainability theories and business plan models. In the future thinking will centre around selling mobility not selling cars he said.