The people driving
mobility in conversation
Entrepreneurs, developers, cyclists and town planners on responsibility, technology and the way forward.
RESPONSIBILITY MEANS REACHING DECISIONS TODAY THAT WILL STILL STAND TOMORROW.
For Frank Bohle, president and CEO of Schwalbe, responsibility starts with the willingness to take a long-term approach to development. In our interview, he talks about the bicycle as part of a larger mobility system, about cities like Copenhagen and Paris that didn’t turn into cycling cities overnight, about the family business entering its next generation and about why Schwalbe is staying the course while others are scaling down their sustainability efforts. It’s not about perfection but about continuously improving.
GOOD IDEAS ARE GENERATED BY EXPERIENCE – COUPLED WITH AN OPEN MIND.
Holger Jahn, head of Development and Technology, has spearheaded product development at Schwalbe for almost three decades. In our interview, he explains why sustainability is now a fixed feature of all development, why the Green Marathon became a turning point and why the biggest hurdles no longer lie in technology but in availability, scalability and cost. The question is no more “does it work?” but rather “can we provide it cost-effectively and in sufficient quantity?”.
OUT ON THE ROAD.
Kai Pflaume spends a lot of time out on the road, both for work and pleasure. As a TV presenter, he’s in constant motion in his native Germany and throughout the rest of the world; as a racing cyclist, he experiences mobility on a completely different level. He started riding a racing bike just four years ago and has since asked himself why he didn’t take this up sooner. He talks of mobility, conscious decisions, acting as a role model in the public eye and why for him the bicycle is more than just a mode of transport.
22 COUNTRIES, 20,000 KM, PLENTY OF UPS AND DOWNS, MASSES OF STOPOVERS – BUT JUST ONE TIRE!
Wiebke Lühmann is a bicycle traveler, content creator and business education graduate. From October 2023 to December 2024, she spent 14 months alone on her bike, cycling from Freiburg in Germany to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. 22 countries, 20,000 kilometers, one tire. In our interview, she tells us about freedom and self-determination, the lessons learned on her travels and why what women are thought capable of – and what not – isn’t always set in stone out on the road. “Cycling for me is a wonderful form of empowerment.”
CYCLING AS THE KEY TO LOW-EMISSION URBAN MOBILITY.
For more than 20 years, Maja van der Voet has been working on improving mobility in cities such as Brussels, Amsterdam and Utrecht and is now active for the G4 city network. Utrecht’s mobility plan is called “the ten-minute city”. This means that all the day-to-day amenities you need should be reachable on foot or by bicycle within ten minutes. About three quarters of all travel in Utrecht is now carried out this way, with the main station home to the largest bicycle park in the world. Her advice to German cities is to make use of the limited space so that it benefits the inhabitants.