Two things stood out at Electronica this year. First, everyone was trying (often too hard) to get a reference to the Internet of Things (IoT) onto their booth displays. Second, anyone who was anybody had a real car on their booth. I mean, hey, this is Germany after all. In the case of ON Semiconductor we had a light cream Audi TT 2.0T Quattro which was a popular backdrop for visitor’s photographs.
Surrounding the car we displayed typical ON Semiconductor content. We had a demonstration of adaptive front lighting based on our NCV78763 family and our NCV7691 solution for LED rear lights.. The Protection Group previewed their NIV1161 ESD protection products for In Vehicle Networking (IVN) and our Aptina group demonstrated solutions for rear camera applications based on the AR0132 and AR0140/AP0100.
In other parts of the hall, you could find a Corvette, a Honda and a BMW i8 electric car, which brings me nicely to the outside of my hotel early on Friday, getting ready to get into the taxi with a colleague to travel to the airport. As I reached for the car door handle, I paused. The handles were recessed into the door itself with no obvious way to get a grip. I vaguely remembered seeing something like this before in a shopping mall showroom in Scottsdale and a light tough caused the handles to spring out of the door, allowing me to open it. I walked around the back to see an unfamiliar logo which looked like a ‘T’ and as I was trying to process it, a laughing taxi driver confirmed that I was about to sit in to the first Tesla Model S taxi in Germany.
During the 30 minute trip to the airport our driver, who spoke excellent English, was only too happy to tell us all about the Tesla taxi experiment. The Taxi Ostbahnhof Centeroperates a fleet of over 50 Prius cars. The owner is Peter Koehl , whose philosophy is a mixture of environmentalism and capitalism. For example, if the drivers manage to get better mileage from the Prius that the nominal specifications, then the driver and the owner split the resulting savings. This encourages more economical driving. The Tesla is new to the fleet and although it represented a significant outlay there are a lot of features that make it interesting as a taxi:
Tesla was investing heavily in supercharging stations in the Munich area. Currently there are over 30 stations in Germany. These are free to use and can charge a car in around 30 minutes. So in theory the car was free to run. An option to swap out the batteries at the station will soon be available getting the car back on the road in less than two minutes and giving owners a choice – fast or free (see the Tesla video HERE).
The car is currently getting around 460 Km. per charge.
The car doesn’t need an oil change and because of regenerative braking, never needs new brake pads. In theory, service intervals could be 100K kilometer apart which represents a significant saving for a fleet of cars.
According to our driver, currently there are around 25 Tesla cars on the road in Munich.
The enormous 17” computer screen which represented the dashboard provided details of traffic conditions, maps, recommended detours around traffic and charging station locations at the slightest touch.
The Tesla Model S can accelerate! Our driver took great pleasure in demonstrating the car’s 365 horsepower which is made more impressive by the fact that the drive is virtually silent.
Since there is no conventional engine, luggage can be placed in the front and the back.
The ride passed quickly and we were soon at our boarding gates waiting for out flights. As someone whose company pioneers energy savings, I was excited by the Tesla taxi, and I admire the infrastructure investment that Tesla was making and is planning to make all around Europe.
It will be interesting to see when we come back for Electronica 2016 if we are met at the airport by a fleet of Tesla taxis or if this proves to be a footnote to the story of the electric car – what do you think is the more likely scenario?
