Friday, July 22, 2016

Germany Day 6: Mercedes & Porsche

Today we toured the Mercedes Factory and the Porsche Museum. The Mercedes Factory was our first stop. A few things we learned there:

  • It takes 4 days to make a Mercedes S class.
  • The factory has 5200 robots.
  • There are 10,000 employees in the Mercedes research and development division, all located at the factory.
  • The complex has it's own power plant, 4 restaurants, its own fire department with 80 firefighters, a medical clinic with 14 doctors, and it runs 24 hours a day 5 days a week.

first horseless carriage 

 Charlotte working the iPad overview of the factory

bus ride on the factory tour

Charlotte picked out a ride

James playing the race simulator


girls can race too!


The traffic driving into Stuttgart was horrible and it took much longer that it should have to get to the Porsche Museum. We ended up grabbing a quick bit to each at the restaurant at Porsche before our scheduled tour started. The food was very good though - Brannon enjoyed a curried sausage (he hates curry but wanted to try another regional dish).

Our tour guide at Porsche was very good at engaging the kids and making the history of Porsche fun for them. A few things we learned:

  • Ferdinand Porsche invented the first hybrid car in the early 1900s.
  • Aluminum is much lighter than steel and carbon fiber is much lighter than aluminum (the kids got to hold pieces of each).
  • Porsche had a brief stint in F1 racing, but abandoned it since it was too removed from it's production car. Instead, Porsche focused its racing development on LeMans.
  • Porsche does not intend to build a 7 seat SUV in the near future (I asked).
first hybrid car by Ferdinand Porsche

"Sasha" race car - first small car by Porsche

fire truck by Porsche

first 356 
getting our hands on some of the materials that cars are made of

feeling the difference between steel and ceramic brakes



Sally Carrera from the movie "Cars"

the kids playing with the huge media display

Porsche 918

James having fun on another race simulator

outside the museum

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