Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Steiger

Wolfgang Steiger is the director Future Technologies within the External Relations department for the Volkswagen Group. His skills are in powertrain development and design.

During his career he was involved with Robert Bosch GmbH, Battelle Institute and Adam Opel AG finally there being responsible for diesel engine development and test. In 1997, he joined the Volkswagen AG group research department. Until December 2008, for more than eleven years, he has been responsible for powertrain research, including diesel and gasoline engines, transmissions, hybrids, batteries, fuel cells, engine electronics and fuels.

He gave more than 100 publications, presentations and lectures in several Universities, including in China.

Wolfgang Steiger is engaged in several European organizations:
- Chairman of the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council ERTRAC
- Chairman of the European Green Car Initiative EGCI Advisory Group of the European Commission
- Steering team member of the Energy Science Center ETH Zürich

Wolfgang Steiger graduated from the Technical University Darmstadt with a degree in mechanical engineering and holds an PhD (Dr.-Ing.) from the same university. In 2008, he has been appointed as Professor to the University Coburg, Germany.

In 2005 Wolfgang Steiger has been rewarded with the “Prof. Ferdinand Porsche Prize”

Presentation

Future Mobility - Based on efficiency increase and decarbonisation

Future vehicles and powertrains have to support the development of sustainable mobility. So a strategy for the R&D of those has to contain two main roadmaps: first to continuously improve the efficiency of the powertrains and vehicles in usage and production and second to decarbonise all energies used for transport and production. Together with a smart infrastructure and mobility concepts this will lead to a sustainable mobility system of the future.

Such a sustainable mobility system for individual transport has to react much on future individual and societal needs, resulting in more diversified cars and powertrains. Especially the needs of long distance transport in rural areas and inner-city transport in the growing number of mega cities require different technical answers.

A two way strategy may be formed, with one side clearly being focused on combustion engines with electrical support for further fuel consumption reduction and a second way highly concentrated on electrification using batteries as energy carrier. On this second pathway, finally leading to an all range battery electric drive train, during the time of increasing electrification, plug in technology with range extenders, will overcome the lag of energy content in today’s battery systems.

Finally this leads to transport mode specific optimized components with battery electric powertrains for the urban areas, range extender electric cars for the sub urban and combustion engine based for the long distance transport area. Each of those mobility modes will be energized by renewable energy mainly based on biomass and renewable electric power.

 Future Mobility - Based on efficiency increase and decarbonisation