Opening Celebration for the Electric Mobility Lab
On the occasion of the inauguration of the Electric Mobility Lab, eLab for short, a panel disucssion took place on Campus Melaten. The panel discussion was titled "Electromobility Made in NRW."
The panelists were Garrelt Duin, Minister for Economic Affairs, Energy and Industry of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia; Marcel Phillip, Mayor of the city of Aachen, RWTH rector Ernst Schmachtenberg; Professor Achim Kampker, Chair of Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components at RWTH Aachen; Professor Dirk Uwe Sauer, Chair of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage Systems; and Professor Günther Schuh, managing director of RWTH Aachen Campus GmbH.
More than 140 guests from politics and business as well as university representatives took part in the inauguration celebrations and participated in a guided tour of the new facilities.
The Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the "Ziel 2" program of the European Regional Development Fund supported the construction of the new building and its facilities, whose investment volume totaled about eight million Euros.
The NRW Minister of the Economy, Garrelt Duin, declared himself pleased with the further development of electric mobility in North Rhine-Westphalia: “The eLab makes it possible for both academia and industry to intensify research and development in the field of electric mobility and bring new products to market. Thus we are able to boost this important field in North Rhine-Westphalia and come closer to our aim of making electric mobility a part of our everyday lives.“
Research in the field of electromobility as conducted on RWTH Aachen Campus significantly contributes to this development. As Professor Achim Kampker explains, “in our research activities, we focus on two objectives – to optimize individual components and to develop prototypes of electric powertrains. In the eLab, an interdisciplinary team of RWTH researchers and industrial partners join forces to achieve these goals.”
Towards Marketable Products
Electric powertrain components and prototypes under development include battery cells and systems, power electronics components, control elements, and electric motors. The aim of the lab is to support the automotive supplier industry in their research and development activities on electric vehicle components and in their efforts to transform research results into marketable products.
The first staff members have been working at the eLab since August 2015. The building has 3,600 square meters of floor space, divided into offices; a battery test bench, the so-called Battery Abuse Center; and a machine park. More than 60 experts from science and industry will collaborate in the electric mobility lab.
Five RWTH institutes are involved in the eLab:
IEM – Institute of Electrical Machines
ISEA (de) – Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives
ISF – Welding and Joining Institute
PEM – Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components
WZL – Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering