Grease under his Fingernails & Electrified on his Brain
For Raven Rotsaert being both an artist and an automotive engineer is not as much of a contradiction as you might think. Nor is being passionate about both vintage gasoline cars and cutting-edge Electric Vehicles.
By day he’s the Bosch principal calibration engineer for an advanced EV powertrain project. By night he’s restoring, modifying and souping up his 1992 gasoline-powered Volkswagen Corrado SLC.
Like Raven, Bosch is focusing on improving performance, increasing efficiency and reducing emissions no matter the engine type. The company offers a full range of powertrain options including electric, fuel cell, hybrid and internal combustion engines.
A long history with internal combustion engines gives Bosch and Raven an edge with new innovations and improvements for all powertrain types.
As Raven sees it, “I have decades of experience that allows me to know how things used to be. I can use that knowledge, be inspired by new technology and still push it all forward. It’s about creatively coming up with new solutions.”
Raven says that in the digitized and electrified world there is still a lot of room for innovation.
“We work with startup companies that have these great ideas about how they want to change the world, with new integrated features. We say, ‘OK cool’. We can help you do it”, Raven says.
Raven came from a family of artists, and he loved to imagine and draw his own vehicle designs. He signed up for engineering classes in college thinking that’s what he needed to get a job drawing cars. He then discovered the physics behind engineering to be “pretty cool stuff” too.
The artist in him brought another dimension to his engineering. “I think there is an art to engineering. There's not always an equation that gives you the answer. You get a feeling that can give you the right answer,” he says.
His artistic soul drives him to put some soul into the EV driver experience.
“In the past, many drivers sensed their vehicle had a soul or character. Therefore, what driving experiences should we create in an EV to make a driver want to drive and not just be driven?”
Raven loves to reimagine what his Corrado can be. For decades, Bosch has reimagined the internal combustion engine through countless technological advancements.
Both are bringing these innovation skills and creativity to newer technology powertrains such as electric, fuel cell and hybrids to help make them a success.
As Raven puts it, “I think it takes a person and a company that are passionate about vehicles to have a vision of how they should and can work. That’s what makes us exceptional.”
