TRADE TALK
LEADING FROM THE TOP WITH PASSION Australian Automotive Aftermarket Magazine caught up with MANN+HUMMEL Group Chairman Thomas Fischer at the recent AAA Expo to discuss the future of a company producing filters in a market that is moving towards battery EVs
From the second you are introduced to MANN+HUMMEL Group Chairman, Thomas Fischer, you can tell he is genuinely enthusiastic about the company and the products it produces and sells. Thomas is the grandson of one of the original founders of the company, Adolf Mann, and, as well as being Chairman, he represents the Mann family on the company’s Board. After his vocational training as a banker at the Deutsche Bank, Thomas studied Business Economics at the University of Mannheim. For 12 years he worked for the ITT Automotive Group at different sites such as Bietigheim-Bissingen, Korea, the USA and Frankfurt, with his last role being General Manager Product Line Electrical Motors. Afterwards he joined Hasco Hasenclever in Lüdenscheid as Chief Executive Officer. Since 2002 Thomas Fischer – who is married and has two adult sons – has acted as Chairman of the Board of the MANN+HUMMEL Group, Ludwigsburg, and he holds various seats as board member and on the advisory council. In his function as Chairman and representative of the Mann family, he focuses on strategy, vision and innovation. He also sees his role as preserving and advancing the family-owned company, its values, goals and culture by driving change through forming, integrating, aligning, and guiding the management team.
106
Australian Automotive Aftermarket Magazine May 2022
Interestingly, the company started life in textiles before pivoting to become a filtration specialist. “The founders had a textile company, and in the Second World War, they needed to keep the workers - mostly women - busy. Not with producing women’s clothes as they had done before, but with something which was important for military or war use to keep the factory running. And so, they came up with filtration,” Thomas said. The business actually continued with textiles right up until 1941 before moving exclusively into automotive. “They focused on the automotive side and not the textile side, because with the competition you get out of Asia, you cannot produce textiles competitively in Germany,” Thomas said. As a company that focuses heavily on filtration products, many would see the current world push into the Electric Vehicle market as a major challenge for the business which has a product line featuring oil and engine air intake filters, but Thomas remains upbeat about the company’s future prospects. “I’m a firm, firm believer that the ICE engines will stay for a while yet,” Thomas says.
“It could well be that ICE engines will be fueled by synthetic fuels which you can produce from hydrogen, and Australia will become one of the biggest hydrogen producers in the world. There will be a place for battery EVs, for fuel cells and for synthetic fuel. “Europe is for me a little bit too dogmatic for going only with battery electric, but in China, you have apartment blocks with 500 apartments each. You cannot charge 500 cars in that situation. “People are talking that we will go electrical, but we don’t want to carry tons of batteries around, and until the battery technology has improved dramatically, they still will stay with combustion engines. Also, the heavy duty and the off-road area still will be there for us for a long time. “What about countries where you don’t have infrastructure to charge, or you go long distances, like when you are living in the middle of Australia? It is unlikely you will find charging stations at every corner.” Thomas also points out that the MANN-FILTER range also includes many products that will remain important even for EVs. “The cabin filter is getting more and more important, and we do smart cabin filters, and we work with data there, because the longer you can keep the air in the cabins, the less you have to heat or to cool the air you get from outside, and then we help extending the range as you are not drawing on power from the battery for cabin temperature control,” Thomas said. He also sees opportunities for a whole new range of filtration products especially for the EV market. “A battery is breathing when you charge it – it’s getting hot, so air goes out, air goes in. You need a filter medium which helps that,” Thomas said. Thomas also explains that dust is the enemy of batteries, and it needs to be filtered from the battery fluids. “And in the hydrogen area, you need an ion exchange
