Day 1: Workshop, matchmaking, company visits
ATC 2026, Day 1: use cases, matchmaking and four company visits
The second Automotive Transformation Conference (ATC) opened in Linz on Tuesday, 22 September. Philipp Pichler, Cluster Manager at Business Upper Austria, welcomed the participants to a sold-out conference.
The morning ran on two tracks. In the Drive2Transform workshop, participants worked in three small groups on the use cases the project has developed in automation, electrification and the platform economy. Project partners moderated the groups, and the results go directly into the project's Transnational Exploitation Plans. In parallel, companies met one-to-one in the B2Match matchmaking.
After lunch and networking in the expo area, four groups set off on company visits: Rosenbauer (autonomous driving and electrification), BMW Group Plant Steyr (electrification), Linz AG (mobility platform and the lighthouse project ROBERTA) and the DigiTrans test track for automated driving. Seeing the transformation on site gives a view that no presentation can replace.
The day closed with a keynote by Marwa Ben Ali, Free University of Bolzano, on twenty years of automotive transformation in South Tyrol, followed by dinner and networking.
Day 2: Conference programme
ATC 2026, Day 2: autonomous driving, mobility platforms and electrification
On Wednesday, 23 September, Christian Altmann (Business Upper Austria) and Angelika van Es (Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Joint Secretariat) opened the conference programme. Angelika van Es outlined the programme perspective on transnational cooperation.
The talks followed the fields Drive2Transform works on. Benjamin Scher (movingfutures), Thomas Strasser-Krauss (TOM Robotics), Christian Schmid (Infineon) and Mariem Mounir (EDI) spoke on autonomous driving. Melanie Juppe and Andrea Reindl (University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria) and Stephan Andreas Röß (AI-Charge Technologies) covered mobility platforms. Josef Ecker (EDAG), Hubert Mitterhofer (Linz Center of Mechatronics) and Markus Kofler (WM Technics) covered electrification. In the closing panel, Boštjan Berginc (Hidria), Adam Szafron (Maflow & BAP Group), Marwa Ben Ali (Free University of Bolzano) and Barbara Unterauer (MAGNA) discussed where the automotive industry is heading.
A humanoid robot at the Drive2Transform stand drew a steady crowd, and with it many conversations with the project partners. We were especially pleased to see that many participants from the first edition came back.