The year 2023 has been an exciting one for ARISTHODOS AG. Due to the great interest and high demand for our services, we are well prepared and want to continue on the best path with you in 2024 to shape the future of mobility together.
We wish our clients, friends and business partners a merry Christmas and a good start to a successful and healthy 2024!
Our webinar series on mobility, launched in September 2023, was received with great interest and has often enjoyed high attendance. This confirms our choice of diverse presentation topics and our mission to transform transport to zero-emission technologies in the long term.
We would like to thank all the speakers for their exciting and interesting presentations and plan to continue the ARISTHODOS AG webinar series in 2024 with exciting and interesting contributions. We are therefore pleased to announce the following dates and presentations:
The ARISTHODOS AG webinar series will continue in 2024 as follows:
Registration will open shortly. You will find the details in the “Webinars” section.
On 21 November, Jörg Neubauer, Site Director of Alstom Lokomotiven Service, spoke about decarbonising diesel locomotives. The current stock of around 4,000 shunting locomotives with an advanced age, but an expected remaining life of more than 20 years, is divided equally between 3-axle and 4-axle locomotives in Europe. Jörg Neubauer explained the enormous potential of CO2 savings in tonnes of a retrofitted locomotive running on green hydrogen compared to a new or modernised V100 series locomotive, using the Prima H3 locomotive as an example. Direct combustion of hydrogen has many advantages. These include ease of integration, continued use of the existing combustion engine, the ability to use only 95% pure hydrogen, CO2-free operation and a significant reduction in NOx emissions.
Adapting the refuelling system and equipping the tanks with appropriate protection systems must be considered. The transition from the test vehicle to the production vehicle is currently underway, and the trial will start in May 2024.
For all participants and interested parties, we have made the presentation documents of the webinar available for download in the “Webinars” section.
David Coleman, Managing Director of hynes – Hydrogen and New Energy Solutions GmbH, spoke in our well-attended webinar on 23 October 2023 about the current situation and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per sector in order to achieve the climate targets. Due to its high efficiency, electricity will be the future primary energy source by 2050. This requires an urgent market ramp-up for hydrogen and power-to-liquid (PtL, conversion of electrical energy into liquid fuel) imports.
Referring to various vehicle classes, he explained for which vehicles, application scenarios and refuelling models electric drive, fuel cell and hydrogen drive systems are suitable.
It is necessary for fleet operators to have a regulatory framework for an efficient, sustainable and operationally feasible technology mix. In addition, the technologies – drive and infrastructure – are already available, but still require continuous further development.
For all participants and interested parties, we have made the presentation documents of the webinar available for download in the “Webinars” section.
One of the challenges facing the rail industry is the provision of additional capacity.
In his presentation on 9 November 2023, Gerhard Paal, Head of Digital Services Sales at Siemens Mobility, reported on the Railigent X platform, which can be used to record condition data from rail vehicles, signalling systems and infrastructure, to generate relevant information and to produce recommendations for maintenance and operations on the way to 100% availability.
A practical example demonstrated the effectiveness of the system, which can be used to achieve approximately 99.5% vehicle availability for operations. The digital transformation, starting with monitoring, predicting the need for maintenance and its optimisation, and ultimately achieving data-driven maintenance, is the way forward. The focus is primarily on the reliability of assets and optimising the utilisation of maintenance facilities. In the case of rail vehicles, the focus is on mobility and operationally critical systems such as doors, air conditioning systems, bogies, points and others.
By using the Railigent X platform, up to 30% of unnecessary workshop visits and up to 15% of maintenance costs can be saved. A considerable potential with asset lifetimes of 30 to 40 years.
Dr Farzad Vesali, Managing Director of PANTOhealth GmbH, presented the PANTOhealth system on 15 November 2023, which was developed to monitor the overhead lines in the electrified railway network to make it more efficient than today and be controlled in a demand-oriented and cost-optimised manner.
Traditional overhead monitoring is mainly performed via two main approaches, including visual and measurement inspection in the traditional, cost-intensive way at intervals between six months and two years. In the proposed solution by PANTOhealth, data is initially collected through the customer’s historical data, via a high-precision, on-board monitoring system or the PANTOhealth simulation tool. In the next step, the data collected is processed by algorithms and the results are visualised on a user-friendly platform.
The use of digital twins makes it possible to evaluate the data with little effort, recognise patterns and identify conspicuous places on the network. Digital twins also support the design engineers with line simulation.
The presentation by Andreas Pfeffer, Managing Director of TO ZERO GmbH, was met with great interest.
Andreas Pfeffer reported on the world’s megatrends and on the growing hunger for energy, and explained the challenges associated with limited planetary fossil resources
His statement: The longer we wait to switch to alternative drives, the more massive the pressure to act will be and the greater the pressure to act will be to achieve the 1.5°C target.
In the further course of the presentation, he reported on the concept of commercial vehicles, namely converting existing diesel city buses to electric drive vehicles. According to his findings, in many cases buses are no longer usable due to the tightening of emissions standards in tenders and are therefore scrapped or sold abroad. However, the vehicle itself, i.e. the chassis and superstructures of the vehicles, can still be used in the long term at this time.
The current range of converted buses is already over 400 kilometres, and battery technology is constantly improving.
Converting existing assets is more resource-efficient than producing new ones. Passengers are more interested in punctuality, cleanliness, Wi-Fi and USB charging options than the age of the vehicles.
And it is currently clear that subsidies are limited, and the obligation to switch to environmentally friendly drive systems is in place due to the Clean Vehicle Directive. Even more reason to make the most of scarce resources.
Linus Frank, Managing Director of Vesputi GmbH, spoke on 18 October 2023 to a large audience about the Mobilitybox. This can become an attractive building block for local public transport on the way to networked and sustainable mobility: it seamlessly integrates buses and trains with other services such as hotel accommodation, events and employee mobility, thereby making the service more digital and attractive.
With Mobilitybox, Vesputi is developing the backend behind the sustainable mobility ecosystem of the future, providing instant access to public transport ticketing across Europe via a single developer portal. Fully standardised and with maximum flexibility
Starting in September 2023, ARISTHODOS AG will offer webinars on various mobility topics.
A listing of the topics will follow shortly.
