The TU Wien was honoured with two awards at the Houska Prize 2025. In the university category, two of the three awards went to TU Wien. We congratulate the project leaders and teams on this great achievement!

Second place went to the project „Innovative Control and Monitoring of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles“ under the leadership of Assoc. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Christoph Hametner and Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Stefan Jakubek (Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics, Faculty of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering), third place went to ‘ELAN - Development of laser architectures for next-gen applications’, project leader Univ. Prof. Dr Andrius Baltuška (Institute of Photonics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology). First place this year went to TU Graz, meaning that all three awards went to TU Austria, opens an external URL in a new window universities.

Innovative Control and Monitoring of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles

The project “Innovative Control and Monitoring of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles” deals with the development of a state-of-the-art, modular and predictive control and monitoring system for fuel cell hybrid vehicles. Driven by the increasing demand for sustainable drive solutions in heavy goods transport, the actual operating status of the fuel cells and batteries is monitored in real time through the use of intelligent energy management systems (EMS). With the help of precise sensors and networked vehicle technologies (V2V and V2I), current driving conditions, traffic and weather data are recorded and integrated into predictive control algorithms. This innovative approach makes it possible to optimally distribute the energy flow, minimise hydrogen consumption and at the same time reduce wear and tear on key components.

Building on many years of collaboration between the Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics at TU Wien and AVL List GmbH, a hierarchically structured control system is being developed in the project. While individual components such as fuel cell control and battery management are precisely controlled at the lower level, the EMS takes over overall coordination at a higher level. This dual structure not only improves operating efficiency, but also extends the service life of the systems by recognising potential problems at an early stage. In this way, the project is making a significant contribution to sustainable mobility by creating the technical basis for efficient, environmentally friendly and future-proof drive solutions.

Short Video about the Project Presentation