In the huge garage hall at the Uni­ver­sity’s INES in­sti­tute in Bohls­bach, we are sur­rounded by old pro­to­types of the Schluck­specht power-sav­ing speed­ster. “We could turn this into a mu­seum,” Pro­fes­sor Claus Fleig muses while show­ing Markus Schuler, head of Neu­mayer Tek­for’s pro­duc­tion plan­ning di­vi­sion, around the build­ing and ex­plain­ing the spe­cial fea­tures of each Schluck­specht model. Schuler and Hausach plant man­ager Jörg Stof­fels have just de­liv­ered the newest ad­di­tion to the fleet, a white elec­tri­cal Fiat 500, in the pres­ence of Rec­tor Win­fried Lieber and Pro­fes­sors Fleig and Al­fred Isele on be­half of the De­part­ment of Me­chan­i­cal and Process En­gi­neer­ing.

At Neu­mayer Tek­for’s, the car had been used for in­ter­nal-de­vel­op­ment test­ing, e.g. for two-stage gear sys­tems, and to gain prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences with me­chan­i­cal parts in elec­tric ve­hi­cles. Since the com­pany has re­ori­ented it­self and longer pur­sues R&D in this field, the test car be­came su­per­flu­ous in Hausach and was do­nated to Of­fen­burg Uni­ver­sity – a for­tu­nate cir­cum­stance es­pe­cially for stu­dents of mecha­tron­ics. “With this Fiat we now have a great test ve­hi­cle with which stu­dents can apply their the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge in real prac­tice,” says Claus Fleig, es­pe­cially since au­to­mo­tive mecha­tron­ics is a field the M+V De­part­ment plans to ex­pand on.

A par­tic­u­lar high­light of the ve­hi­cle is its re­fit­ted elec­tri­cal en­gine, demon­strat­ing and pro­vid­ing fur­ther ideas for lithium-ion bat­tery retro­fitting. “The car fits per­fectly into our re­search and teach­ing ac­tiv­i­ties,” says Rec­tor Lieber, look­ing back on years of re­ward­ing co­op­er­a­tion with Neu­mayer Tek­for. The com­pany reg­u­larly hosts ex­cur­sions to its Hausach plant and col­lab­o­rates with re­search pro­jects and the­sis work; as a re­sult, a num­ber of M+V grad­u­ates have also found work with the com­pany. Sus­tain­able in­deed!