Institut für Transportlogistik optimizes journey through germany

The record-breaking journey of an electric car over more than 20,000 kilometres through the whole of Germany led the car to the TU Dortmund on Tuesday, 10 November - which is not surprising: The route for the electric marathon was worked out by a team led by Prof. Uwe Clausen, head of the Institute for Transport Logistics (ITL) at TU Dortmund University.

By Tuesday, Rainer Zietlow and his co-pilot Dominic Brüner had already covered 17,000 kilometres across Germany. There are several specifications for their route: Each place is to be visited only once. In addition, all German fast charging stations with a charging capacity of at least 60 kilowatts (kW) and all VW dealers in the Federal Republic are to be visited once. "With a few modifications, this task corresponds to the classic problem of the travelling salesman," says Prof. Clausen.  "The challenge of visiting each place exactly once and the other requirements sounds amazingly simple. However, the travelling salesperson problem is one of the hardest from a complexity theory perspective," explains Nicolas Kämmerling, ITL group leader Mathematical Optimisation. Therefore, the expertise of the ITL team was needed to set up a suitable mathematical optimisation model. "Everything has worked out wonderfully so far," says Zietlow. "We have achieved all the planned goals and always found a charging station. Prof. Clausen's team has once again come up with a great solution."

The electric car's journey started on 28 September at the southernmost hotel in Germany and ends at the northernmost car park in Germany, west of List on Sylt. A highlight of the tour is a stop at an SOS Children's Village, which Rainer Zietlow has supported since 2005. Rainer Zietlow has already gained a lot of experience with long-distance rides and world records on all continents of the world.

Incidentally, Zietlow led a long-distance journey through the whole of Germany in 2009 - at that time with a car that was powered by natural gas instead of petrol. The route had already been worked out by a team led by Prof. Clausen.

The journey can be followed at https://www.id3-deutschlandtour.com/.