Students design futuristic e-chargers - eMobility Made in Austria

The third and fourth classes of the industrial design course at the HTL Ferlach have developed concepts for fast charging e-charging stations for an industry design competition, held by the school and in cooperation with Infineon Austria. 17 projects were submitted, 4 managed to snag accolades.

To judge the projects with the proper expert knowledge, EnerCharge CEO and developer Roland Klauss was asked to be on the jury panel. “I think the idea of a design contest is great and I was excited by practical approach of the highly motivated students. I was positively surprised by the many ideas and am very happy to have been given the chance to be part of the jury. I am furthermore very confident that the cooperation of all persons involved will bear fruit further down the line.”

Sabine Herlitschka, CEO of Infenion Austria: “The ideas of the students paint a picture of how refuelling electricity with fast chargers can look in the future and how it can be combined with user-friendliness and sustainability. It shows how practical cooperation of industry and education can lead to creative solutions for issues of our times.”

The students were tasked to consider design, form, haptics, user-friendliness, the interaction of human and machine, connectivity with other applications such as digital payment and feasibility in their projects. Every concept included a small demo-model, each of witch was closely scrutinized by the jury.

Winning Projects

First place went to Michael Kohlmaier. Laura Zemlo and Dominik Bachmayer took second place. Third was shared between two teams: Christin Werkl and Thitiphon Chobjarung as well as Raphael Plieschnig and Andreas Quehenberger. Fourth place went to Elias Gigacher and Jana Wiltsche.

Current figures show the practical and societal relevance of the contest. 11.700 new electric cars were licenced until the end of May 2021 in Austria. A plus of 215 percent compared to the previous year. According to the Bundesverband Elektromobilität, there are over 8.000 publicly available charging points in Austria at time of writing, 500 of those are located in the state Carinthia, home base of EnerCharge. Not included in these numbers are the privately-owned charging points. According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Austria needs up to 30.000 publicly available charging points until 2030 to satisfy the growing demand.

More information:
Infineon Discoveries Alles über Elektromobilität
Infineon Effizientes Schnellladen
HTL Ferlach https://www.htl-ferlach.at/