Today we woke up to a very rainy morning and got to have a special breakfast. We traveled about 30 minutes to a small village to have a special white sausage breakfast. The breakfast took place in a little building that you were able to get sausage and mustard, cheese platter, or pretzels. This was a really interesting experience as we have nothing like this in the US. I have learned from this breakfast and previous breakfasts that Germans to have more savory breakfasts than we do back at home.
After the breakfast, we traveled back to the hotel to take a quick break and nap before we left for Forvia. Forvia was the closest company so we only had to take a 15 minute tram ride to go to the company. We unfortunately were unable to take photos of the company. When we first arrived we broke into two groups to go on a factory tour. Forvia’s plant was on the smaller size but was still really impressive. They make engine parts for high end car companies such as Porshe and Lamborgini. They focus on supplying all of these parts to luxury car brands that are the OEMs. Unlike the other companies, Forvia had a pretty good ratio of robots to workers unlike the others which had more robots.
Something I was confused on was that there seemed to be two names used at the plants, Forvia and Faurecia. Faurecia was the company’s original name but after combining with the company Hella the new combination became Forvia.
After the conclusion of the tour, we went back to the conference room to have a presentation on the company with a specific focus on the future of the company. They are mainly focusing on electric vehicles but are potentially going to pursue hydrogen fuel cells at a later time. The main thing I learned from this presentation was that electric vehicles are more suitable for a day to day car but would not be viable for trucks. Hydrogen fuel cells are not usable for the average car but work better with trucks.
Since Forvia provides various engine parts, I think they will be able to survive this up and coming wave of new cars as they seem to have a plan in motion already. I think they will be able to handle the market pretty well as they cover a wide range of parts and aren’t reliant on one product unlike Hoerbriger. I think Hoerbriger would be the worse off when it comes to the transition in cars.
Tomorrow we get to visit Audi, our first OEM and I am very excited to see the assembly line for the cars!
