The future success of talented people is something BCG is very passionate about and continuously supporting. By maximising the capabilities of leading experts and innovators, we believe that extraordinary ideas can be identified, nurtured, and brought to life.
BCG Platinion’s partnership with the aCentauri Solar Racing team is a prime example, as we support them on their mission to redefine solar-powered transportation and take it to the streets. In the recent Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, aCentauri showcased their capabilities by traveling 3,000km across Australia’s outback from Darwin to Adelaide.
Not only does this challenge demonstrate the solar-powered capabilities of the aCentauri racing car, but it equips and empowers the next rise of innovative vehicles to tackle climate change. In this article, we will take a closer look at solar racing itself and highlight what we intend to achieve by teaming up with aCentauri.
The Dawn of Solar Transport
Weighing in at just 188kg, aCentauri’s Aletsch racing car can reach top speeds of 120km/h, sustain speeds of 80km/h on solar power alone, and has a range of more than 400km in total darkness.
When it comes to the parameters of the challenge, participating solar race cars are permitted just 5kW hours of stored energy. This small amount equals roughly 8% of the battery capacity of an average electric street vehicle indicating just how energy efficient these innovative vehicles must be. They generate all other consumed energy from either the sun, or by recovering the kinetic energy generated by the vehicle itself.
The aCentauri race car has been tuned to take on the 3,000km World Solar Challenge, but the project will do more than just test the ultimate boundaries of energy efficiency. During the event, the aCentauri team will gain insight into the emerging technologies in action that may prove crucial to the future of sustainable racing.
Working Together
Our experts are uniquely positioned to help key players carry out the transformations they need to become smart mobility leaders. BCG and BCG Platinion work with clients from across a wide range of industries to accelerate their climate and sustainability journeys, helping them identify and access sustainable innovation at scale. We specialize in embedding sustainability at scale into our clients’ businesses, which can involve sustainable finance and investing, nature-based solutions, or renewable energy projects.
We are immensely proud to be the technology innovation partner for the great minds at aCentauri. Our technology and digital experts are excited to work alongside aCentauri’s next generation of engineers to workshop and advise on enhancements for future races in the years to come.
We can’t wait to see what aCentauri is able to achieve in solar racing and look forward to working together.
About the Authors
Oliver Schwager
Managing DirectorMunich, Germany
Oliver is a Managing Director at BCG Platinion. He supports clients all around the globe when senior advice on ramping up and managing complex digital transformation initiatives is the key to success. With his extensive experience, he supports clients in their critical IT initiatives, ranging from designing and migrating to next-generation architectures up to transforming IT organizations to be ready for managing IT programs at scale in agile ways of working. He is part of the Industrial Goods leadership group with a passion for automotive & aviation.
Lukasz Marganski
Managing DirectorZurich, Switzerland
Lukasz is a Managing Director & Head of BCG Platinion CEE & Switzerland. He leads the BCG’s Platinion practice in Central Eastern Europe & Switzerland with a strong focus on growing our local capabilities, while providing digital and technology advisory services to our clients from Financial Services and Retail industries. He is an experienced advisor, strategy and transformation expert working at the intersection of business and technology.
He brings over 18 years of consulting experience from +30 large institutions from Banking, Consumer Finance, Insurance industries from Europe and Asia. Lukasz covers the main areas of a tech transformation from reorienting business strategy to digital, through customer experience design, to technology strategy including IT architecture, scaled agile transformations and innovation agenda.
Johannes Bücker
ManagerMunich, Germany
Johannes has a track record of supporting clients across industries in complex IT transformations, ranging from greenfield IT strategy and architecture definition, project recoveries in Engineering/Manufacturing IT or steering large IT projects.
Prior to joining BCG Platinion, Johannes worked at Siemens’ Digital Industries division, and managed global software rollouts and migration programs for Automotive OEMs.
Roman Gatzenbiler
ManagerHamburg, Germany
Roman Gatzenbiler is a Senior Consultant in the Hamburg office of BCG Platinion. His focus lies in the Energy and Consumer practice focusing on Enterprise Architecture and large-scale ERP transformations.
Oktay Kutschera
Senior IT ConsultantFrankfurt, Germany
Oktay is an IT strategy consultant in the Frankfurt office of BCG Platinion. He has a strong expertise in the Automotive & Mobility sector focusing on the connected car ecosystem, supply chain management and decentralized IT networks. Additionally, he has experience in SAP delivery in context of large-scale S/4 HANA transformations.
