Speaker: Johannes Gimbel, Vertical Market Manager Automotive at Rittal
Technological change in the automotive industry is affecting not only car manufacturers, but also the supply industry in a serious way. Mechanical engineering in particular is affected in many areas by new electrical drive concepts. However, the new technologies not only harbour risks but also considerable opportunities. These must now be exploited by suppliers in order to ensure their future viability.
Discussions about energy efficiency and CO2 footprint are leading, for example, to new innovative components and solutions with which quality manufacturers can differentiate themselves. One example is the use of DC inverter technology for the demand-oriented cooling of control cabinets. Inverter technologies or also DC approaches, which were only used to a limited extent over the years, partly for cost reasons, are increasingly being used on a large scale.
Direct current technology with new perspectives
Direct current technology harmonises with renewable energies and their generation (photovoltaics) and leads to the increased use of battery technology for various applications. Energy storage solutions are used in different scales as intermediate storage for peak-shaving and UPS applications as well as for a partially independent grid feed-in. In future, second-life vehicle batteries will also be available here. The same technologies (e.g. energy storage containers) will then also be used to secure or decouple the charging infrastructure from the grid. In the case of charging parks with several rapid charging stations, the use of an energy storage container can minimise the high demands on the grid connection.
All these technologies are changing current products and installation concepts. Added to this is the increasingly installed intelligence, which uses AI (artificial intelligence) methods and data analytics to examine all processes for further optimisation potential using gigantic amounts of data. Edge computing in particular is creating a completely new area of application, not only in production, but also in many other applications.
All these effects are explained using the example of a modified solution portfolio from Rittal – a leading global systems supplier for enclosures, power distribution, climate control, IT infrastructure and software & service. The aim is to respond to changes in the supplier industry in good time and to position itself successfully within existing or newly developing value-added networks.
