As mobility remains a human need, the current concepts for personal and goods transportation are increasingly being questioned in society. The ongoing climate change crisis requires a shift away from fossil fuel dependency and a reevaluation of our transportation systems. Cities are grappling with the negative effects of excessive motorized individual transportation, while rural areas lack viable alternative options. Furthermore, the construction and maintenance of vehicles and transportation infrastructure is a significant strain on limited resources and the environment.

Current solutions to address these issues often aim to discourage individual motorized transportation without providing equivalent alternatives. This approach can lead to conflicts over the allocation of transportation spaces in urban areas. The societal conflict and lack of a clear goal for sustainable, socially and economically responsible mobility makes it difficult to create a positive vision for the future, which is an essential prerequisite for a functioning economy.

Therefore, we must think about mobility in a new way, taking into account the diverse needs and wants of all members of society. We need to identify intelligent solutions and consider the entire mobility system, including all modes of transportation. Accordingly, the numerous vehicles we have designed and built at ika in the last years range from small, efficient electric vehicles to automated delivery robots and shuttles, to vehicles powered by muscle power.

We are also increasingly analyzing the sustainability of vehicles over their entire life cycle with the perspective of a true circular economy. But most importantly, our research focuses on advancing the connectivity and automation of transportation to create new, attractive mobility options, such as in the national large-scale project UNICARagil, in which we together with 16 partners are building four different fully autonomous vehicles. In the follow-up project AUTOtech.agil, we will further explore a mobility ecosystem that allows for a variable distribution of intelligence across different vehicles and instances such as control centers and transportation infrastructure.

Hardware remains the basis of vehicles - but the behavior and experience of mobility will be increasingly shaped by software that extends beyond the physical boundaries of individual vehicles. We already incorporate this systemic view of hardware and software in our teaching and customized training programs for the industry. After all, it is clear that we can only constructively shape the future together, in cooperation between universities, companies, and institutions.