In Moabit, the working-class child of Berlin’s districts, the electrical engineer Michail von Dolivo-Dobrowolsky wrote technological history. At the beginning of 1889, he got the first three-phase motor running in the halls of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft, thereby laying the foundation for a global corporation that, after brilliant times, came to a sad end in the 1990s. On that part of the factory premises, where experimental engines with a few horsepower were once supposed to demonstrate the superiority of alternating current over direct current, which was still favored at the time, there is now an unadorned building belonging to the supplier Vitesco, which is largely unknown to the public. Here he develops electric axle drives for cars with several hundred employees. Such a drive combines the motor, the electronics required for power control and a small, non-switchable transmission gear in an aluminum housing.
The engineers are preparing to start series production of the fourth generation of drives, and all kinds of test benches are in operation for this purpose. One of them is in an anechoic room equipped with directional microphones. Not a single sound should be heard later when the engine, which has an output of up to 230 kilowatts from the start, starts moving. In another part of the building is a small production line, far too small to produce thousands of engines every day. The engineers only use sample production to go through each individual step. The engine will first go into series production in one of the supplier’s Chinese plants, and there is talk of a lot of travel between the locations. How does this fit with the constantly heard claim that German industry is losing its home game against Chinese competitors?
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