The mobility sector is currently undergoing an transformation, which must be evaluated in terms of the economic, ecological and social dimensions of sustainability. Global competitive pressure is increasing sharply, and sustainability and climate protection are transforming from an additional benefit to an obligatory goal. Classic individual mobility is increasingly being questioned by society. Concept lightweight construction offers new forms of mobility. Vehicles can be optimized for a specific application (use case) and be resource-saving alternatives compared to the classic series-produced vehicle. While there are numerous prototypes of such use-case specific mobility, the introduction into the market often fails due to the high costs associated with pre-series and small series production.   

The project aims to build a digital engineering and production platform for small and medium-sized enterprises that enables manufacturing companies and engineering service providers in cooperative approaches to offer complex products in small quantities to increase their global competitiveness. Distributed engineering and production lowers barriers to launch such lightweight vehicles. Small companies can thus become integrators/OEMs themselves. The engineering and production platform is initially designed for specific use cases of lightweight vehicles. To ensure that the developed platform can withstand the challenges of practical use, the commitment of potential users is of particular interest. That is why the active participation of more than twenty SMEs from Baden-Württemberg is not only encouraging for the project work, but also shows that the industry sees strong economic potential in the development of the platform. Leichtbau BW GmbH and bwcon are responsible for the overall project coordination and lead the knowledge transfer. In addition to the industry partners, KIT, represented by IMI (Institute for Information Management in Engineering) and IIP, Fraunhofer IPA and DLR are involved in the project as scientific partners. The project is rounded off by associated municipalities, which contribute their knowledge about the future mobility behavior of end customers to the project.    

The IIP will carry out the ecological evaluation within the project. Among other aspects, this includes the development of a concept to derive the ecological benefits of the developed lightweight engineering and production platform. Furthermore, it will be investigated how the platform can be extended in order to be able to take ecological aspects into account when using the platform.