By taxi the trip from the central station in Nurem berg to the headquarters of the young Schaeffler Bio Hy brid GmbH takes ten minutes The address is part of a former factory building vintage red brick behind which people are busy designing mobility for tomorrow The ve hicle that everything in the modernly furnished facilities revolves around is omnipresent as a model as a full scale prototype as a drawing and on monitors a four wheel pedelec with a roof A mobility concept that still requires its drivers to pedal but that assists them with a 250 watt electric motor and provides the luxury of weath er protection A vehicle for which no driver s license is necessary and that s slim enough to travel on bicycle paths A vehicle of a kind that doesn t exist yet To get the novelty rolling the startup with its still small current staff of 15 is tackling three challenges at once building an inde pendent business getting an all new vehicle concept off the ground and establishing a new market segment Challenge 1 building an independent business Bio Hybrid Vehicle Schaeffler Wait a minute Since when has the giant in the supplier business been building complete vehicles This would indeed be an ab solute first with far reaching implications that raise a number of questions such as What about a consumer focused sales and support network How can people s enthusiasm be inspired for an attractive product with life style appeal Neither of these have answers that really fit a company with 92 500 employees that s used to manu facturing product volumes in the 100 000 or million range serving customers up to and including large conglomer ates By contrast the mid term plan for the Bio Hybrid tar gets a production volume of only 10 000 units per year Consequently as the idea was maturing it became clear that the 4 wheel pedelec would have to get off the ground elsewhere in spite of having been born under the Schaeffler umbrella Still the people at Schaeffler did not want to entirely part with the Bio Hybrid because as a lighthouse project for the company s pursuit of mobility for tomorrow they d become fond of it The solution was to form a startup Schaeffler Bio Hybrid GmbH Actually it s more of a spin off than a startup because we ve emerged from within the Schaeffler Group says Jakub Fukacz who s responsible for PR and Marketing The communica tion pro s enthusiasm for the Bio Hybrid project is instant ly obvious when he welcomes us and then takes us on a spirited tour of the offices the startup has just moved into An office area on the premises of the Schaeffler Group s headquarters in Herzogenaurach was no option as Fukacz explains We want to get a vehicle for urban mobility off the ground and that can best be achieved in an urban en vironment The parent company supports the process of cutting the cord so that the Bio Hybrid idea can come to full fruition We have to communicate our own messages and ideas address different target groups says Fukacz It s about communicating in other ways more emotional ly The informal style in which Bio Hybrid GmbH addresses visitors and prospective customers on its website and in social media is hard to imagine at Schaeffler but has been deliberately chosen by the startup In addition to the Bio Hybrid product it s neces sary to get the startup company itself off the ground structures and processes have to be put in place work flows defined work schedules established Doing your job as an employee in an existing environment total ly differs from building this environment from scratch says Gerald Vollnhals CEO of the young limited liability company That alone would be an all day challenge but we more or less handle it on the side Rolling up your sleeves and taking action the spirit of a startup Vollnhals is a startup pro who launched his first business while he was still studying for his degree In ad dition to fiber optic networks and Immobilienscout an online real estate platform in 2009 he started a company for electric scooters that was responsible for the electrifica tion of the German cult moped Schwalbe Meister werk Ven tures which is active in the field of medical device tech nology in Berlin complements the portfolio of his business biography So now it s Bio Hy brid Vollnhals is an electric mobility enthusiast and has traveled a distance of 14 000 kilometers 8 700 miles in his Bio Hybrid employees Patrick Seidel Josef Hackner and Dr Simon Opel are working with a passion on getting their innovative pedelec ready for market launch per month is the average cost of ownership for a small car used as a delivery vehicle up to ten times more than for a cargo bike is the average speed of automobile traffic in Mexico City 400 euros 6 km h 3 7 mph outlook 95

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