StudentCar

A vehicle concept by young people for young people

In a research project founded by the Hans Hermann Voss-Foundation pupils and students together with automotive engineers from the RWTH Aachen University develop a modern vehicle concept. Within this project there are several different objectives. The main focus is placed on the conception and detailed virtual design of a vehicle that is tailored to the needs, the requirements, the desire and the financial opportunities of young people.

Furthermore, the open communication with the young people shall reveal the potential future role of automobiles, their level of significance for and their perception by the upcoming generation. Discussing current and future mobility requirements with the target group enables the identification of functional vehicle requirements as the basis for mainly technical developments. In addition, alternative vehicle marketing and financing models that are adapted to the future mobility requirement and transport demand are approached and evaluated. Another question analysed in the “StudentCar” project is whether and how vehicle concepts, that are created by professionally not affected persons, differ from current trends in automotive engineering. The global idea behind this is a more specifically targeted automotive research to the future drivers demand. Being those future drivers students and in particular pupils have to participate actively and be involved intensively in the project in order to achieve these objectives. This active involvement shall at the same time facilitate the educational focus of the project. The aim here is to inspire enthusiasm for the profession of the automotive engineer and support young academics in obtaining relevant qualifications demanded by the automotive industry in the future.

Basically, the “StudentCar” project is divided in the four work packages analysis of the requirements, generating basic ideas, engineering/design and presentation of results together with discussion of the final concept respectively. Students and pupils are involved in each of these project phases.

The vehicle concept will be presented first to students and pupils in order to assess the acceptance by the target group. Afterwards discussions with the automotive industry on the results of the project will follow. Finally, it is planned to interview drivers that are older than the target group in order to identify possible generic future trends.

The presentation of the vehicle concept generated in the project “StudentCar” will be at the end of 2010. The progress in the project can be traced on the constantly up-dated internetsite “www.student-car.de”.

StudentCar-Logo

Contact

Dr. phil. Stefan Ladwig
Manager Research Area
Traffic Psychology & Acceptance
+49 241 80 23888
Email

Dr.-Ing. Dinesh Thirunavukkarasu
Manager Research Area
Vehicle Concepts & HMI
+49 241 80 25699
Email

Project duration

01/2010 – 12/2010

Address

Institute for Automotive Engineering
RWTH Aachen University
Steinbachstraße 7
52074 Aachen · Germany

office@ika.rwth-aachen.de
+49 241 80 25600

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