Glasses and water bottles are on the tables, the monitors are on, the protagonists have arrived and are getting wired up. The room is beginning to fill up. One day before the opening of the International Motor Show in Frankfurt / Main, the third workshop at the Audi Urban Future Summit is addressing the theme “Energies of Resources”. It quickly becomes obvious, however, that this crucial subject cannot be studied as an isolated phenomenon.Six participants have been invited to initiate and facilitate the discussion: Alasdair Ross as the panel’s moderator, Johannes Gerhard of Audi as e-mobility expert, Reinhard Otten – also from Audi – as a developer for energy storage methods, Ludger Hovestadt as an optimistic architect and computer scientist, Andreas Klok Pedersen of BIG Architects as the visualizer of a vision and Ulrich Hatzfeld as the panel’s encouraging and neutralizing politician.


Reinhard Otten and Alasdair Ross

In order to get the audience into the right mood, Ross points out that there are foreseeable developments and unforeseeable developments, and that there are requirements that can be influenced and other developments that will happen regardless of our efforts. We need to have a discussion about what is going to happen and what we want to let happen. Ulrich Hatzfeld provides a lot of hard facts in his presentation, and indicates the – possibly to some extent optimistic – goals of the German government. Demographic change is a fact. That means that we need to adapt our cities to these changes, or else we will be committing “political suicide”. Furthermore, Hatzfeld underlines the opportunities that could be associated with change, since infrastructure improvements allow us to integrate intelligent systems, thus providing impetus for decentralization, which could, in turn, reduce the regional disadvantage of rural areas, for example.

Dr. Ulrich Hatzfeld and Reinhard Otten

Reinhard Otten presents Audi’s e-gas project, with which Audi has committed not only to making electricity-driven cars or investing in renewable energies, but also to developing and providing a solution for energy storage. Thanks to the driverless automobile, Andreas Klok Pedersen opens up new urban spaces within the city. Whereupon the politician notes that the legal situation in the event of an accident, for example, would require clarification. Altogether, the importance of the role of government is made very clear and participants leave a competent and well-informed impression.

Johannes Gehret and Ludger Hovestadt

In the course of the debate, one thing becomes amply apparent: business and politics will have to work together. And politics is all about establishing majorities. What that means is, if we in Germany can’t agree on the modification of a train station, then we need to work on our communication skills. The questions we are dealing with here need to reach a majority of people, so that they can then support and facilitate change.