The 2024 Stuttgart International Symposium kicked off today with the Welcome Session from the Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart moderated by Dr.-Ing. Lea Schwarz, Head of Development Features and Functions/Driving/Energy at AUDI AG. The board members of FKFS, Prof. André Casal Kulzer, Prof. Hans-Christian Reuss and Prof. Andreas Wagner, welcomed the participants in a relaxed discussion. This gave the audience an insight into the current trends in the automotive industry, which will be the focus of the two-day symposium. Prof. Kulzer also pointed out the many exciting program items that the symposium has to offer this year, such as poster sessions, business speed dating, a hands-on workshop and a soccer lounge in the spirit of the European Football Championship.
This was followed by a digital greeting from Minister Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism of the State of Baden-Württemberg, whose schedule unfortunately did not allow her to give the address in person. According to her, due to long-term structural challenges, many companies are currently undergoing difficult times, which makes innovative approaches and platforms such as the Symposium even more important for sharing and discussing current issues and coming up with solutions.
Three exciting plenary lectures were on the program of the first day:
- Dr. Michael E. Hafner, Vice President MB.OS Base Layer and MBUX at Mercedes-Benz AG with "Why Mercedes-Benz chose to build their own Operating System MB.OS"
- Karl Dums, Senior Project Manager eFuels at Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG with “Transformation at Porsche: Sustainability as a Driver for Strategy and Technology"
- Michael Fleiss, CEO of Aurobay with "What Powers the Global Mobility of Tomorrow?"
In addition to these highlights, the presentations took place in five parallel sessions. Approximately 50% of the submissions for the presentations had previously been peer-reviewed by SAE, which again speaks for the high quality of the program. Further presentations took place within the two poster sessions "Powertrain of the Future" and "Vehicle Technology" in the afternoon, in which the authors summarized their scientific topics for the audience.
The Business Speed Dating was also well received. In one session each in the morning and afternoon, participants had the opportunity to learn more about their changing counterparts and make new contacts with the help of a choice of topics.
After these many exciting program points, the participants can look forward to a networking evening at Sky Beach above the rooftops of Stuttgart at the end of the day.