Road transport for long distances and in urban areas represents one of the fastest growing transport modes and is one of the main producers of climate damaging CO2 emissions. Due to this fact, new, innovative technologies for future commercial vehicles are being developed at the institute, particularly with regard to improving energy efficiency and minimising emissions. These technologies are then incorporated into novel vehicle concepts optimised in volume and mass for future use in urban conurbations.
One approach is to support reducing driving resistance by applying lightweight design. Besides increasing payload, other effects regarding environmental protection and low emissions are taken into account. This results in developing alternative structural lightweight designs under consideration of specific requirements, such as costs, quantities, scalability and optimised, alternative lightweight structures.