Phoebe Katz, May 13
This morning, they had bacon at the hotel breakfast. It was not fabulous but it was very exciting. We left the hotel at 7 for our final company tour, with Grob. Our tour guide, George, was awesome and we learned about a huge variety of things, from the different types of stators their machines build to the 3D aluminum printing project they have been working on. We saw their apprenticeship building, which looked very cool. I would love to get to play with all of the machines in there. Every single one of the interns that I saw were men, though, which made me very uncomfortable. I have noticed that in all the factories we have visited and I am very suspicious of the inability of all of these companies to employ women. Then, we went to the warehouse with the built assembly lines. They had a hook and pulley system capable of lifting 32 tons and they had a metal panther with very sharp-looking teeth. It was super cool. We also got to see the space where they build the assembly line machines
After the tour, we ate lunch at their canteen (decent food and it was served with super cool wooden utensils) and had a very long Q&A with George. He was both very helpful in answering our questions and very enthusiastic about the nature of his company. When asked about Grob’s competitors, he said that there are companies that do the same thing but that none of them can make machines to produce the very complex parts that they do. According to him, their technology is far and above all others. If that is accurate, then I am very impressed with the company’s ability to stay ahead of the game and I am curious as to how that is possible in such a quickly transforming industry. My theory is that they have more money than their competition, enabling them to invest in research at a much higher rate. He also remarked that it was a very good place to work and said that we should all come work there. I like the way that he described the company culture but remain confused about the lack of female employees. We headed home after another group picture.
Upon arriving at the university, we filtered into our classroom and began a series of presentations. I was very suspicious of the VDE presentation. Firstly, they put up pictures of all the people they asked to complete their survey and they were, without one singular exception, older white men. I do not have the emotional energy to get into that further. I was also bothered by the fact that no scientists were consulted. By the end of our conversation with the guy who works for VDE, it became clear that they were not really researching reality, but rather just the imaginations of the aforementioned white men. Considering this was the scope of the study, scientific opinion is not really relevant but I personally would have found it interesting to hear the thoughts of a person who understands the technological developments that will be required for long range, autonomous EVs. Overall, I found the presentation to be frustrating to listen to. I did, however, enjoy the presentation on autonomous driving that followed. I was aware of much of what was discussed, but the presenter was very knowledgeable.
After this last set of presentations, we were free to eat dinner on our own. Most of us went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in the main square of Augsburg. The food was fabulous. I got an insanely good bruschetta, arugula, and tomato salad. Interestingly, they used the word “rocket” instead of arugula, which I had never seen before. I have since seen this on menus all over Europe. I have no explanation. For dinner, I had carbonara (it was only pretty good).
