At the German government’s 2nd Climate Research Summit, Federal Research Minister Annette Schavan gave a presentation on the government’s high-tech strategy for climate protection. Innovation alliances between the academic and business worlds that aim to accelerate technological developments for climate protection and open up future markets by combining forces represent a key component of this strategy. Since the 1st Climate Research Summit in March 2007, Bosch has participated in forums to develop concrete innovation alliances. These alliances are now entering the implementation phase, and Bosch will mainly be involved in the fields of mobility and traffic technology.
Over the next decade, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will be investing an additional one billion euros in climate protection. According to Schavan, “In order to achieve the government’s climate protection targets, we will be doing a great deal more climate research.” Four innovation alliances that have already been initiated will be receiving a total of 220 million euros, and partners in industry are making available an additional 1.2 billion euros. As part of its involvement in the innovation alliances for cutting CO2 emissions in cars, Bosch is intensifying its research on environmental and resource protection. These alliances are “Automobilelektronik” (Automotive Electronics), “Sichere Intelligente Mobilität – Testfeld Deutschland” (Safe Intelligent Mobility – Test Area Germany, SIM TD), and “Lithium Ionen Batterie LIB 2015” (Lithium-Ion Battery LIB 2015).
The aim of the Automotive Electronics innovation alliance is to optimize coordination of the individual vehicle components in order to significantly help cut fuel consumption. In addition to further development of vehicle safety technologies, electronics can also help improve the energy balance through energy recovery and effective energy management. Research activities in the field of microsystems technology will help replace fossil primary energy sources with renewable energies, and electronic control systems will also play a key role in optimizing the drive train. The SIM TD innovation alliance forms the basis for efficient traffic management, environmentally friendly traffic control, and traffic safety. Bosch is working with its SIM TD partners on innovative technologies for inter-vehicle networking (car-to-car communication) and the networking of vehicles with stationary control systems (car-to-infrastructure communication). The Lithium-Ion Battery LIB 2015 alliance, which only started at the beginning of November, will use mobile energy storage systems to make major contributions to successful hybrid concepts and the efficient use of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Bosch has joined forces with BASF, EVONIK, LiTec, and VW to create an industrial consortium. Over the next few years, the consortium has undertaken to invest 360 million euros in lithium-ion battery research and development.
