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Discussions in electromobility often focus on product technologies, infrastructure systems and energy management. This unfortunately leads to the neglect of the business aspects concerning electric vehicles (EVs), which often remain a secondary issue. The development and realization of EVs requires new business models and this presupposes the implementation of new value creation networks, new production and sales systems as well as an extensive analysis of the business aspects of EVs.

The climate of entrepreneurs’ opinion in the Federal Republic of Germany has steadily deteriorated during the last four business cycles according to the IFO Institute’s Business Survey1. These changes in the perceptions and expectations of German businessmen can be explained to some extent by the effects of negative psychosocial stimuli.

We have an abundance of economic data to describe the economic process. We can state with relative precision how demand in industry is changing, whether trade turnovers are rising or falling, and how long average working hours are. We know whether producers feel their stocks in hand to be too great or too small; we even know something about business expectations, and about plans for investment in the economy. Despite this and much other information there are many phenomena in our society, and in our economy, which cannot be satisfactorily explained. What do we in fact know about the people who decide on investments and production in our economy? Yet, if we had a time series giving ascertained survey data about the attitudes of business executives to various aspects of life, that is just what might be useful for analyzing and evaluating economic plans und expectations. Is the economy suffering, say, from general pessimism about growth? Are the people who stand at the command posts in our economy dissatisfied, and if so, why? Can we say at all what factors influence the satisfaction of an employer or of employees? Does the satisfaction of leading people in our economy depend more on the size of their income, on their age, or even on their education? Or do other factors govern the matter?

When in 1948 after the monetary reform the IFO Institute for Economic Research, Munich, interviewed several companies through its associates to find out whether the monetary reform had brought about the desired change1, no one thought that this would be the hour of birth of an information technique that would spread out worldwide2. This special form of survey technique was not completely new in Germany or abroad. The persons who initiated the IFO surveys, which were then undertaken on a monthly basis starting with November 1949, did not know about the “forerunners” in Germany3, nor were they aware of the experiences that had already been achieved in this field abroad4. Also the formal, theoretical foundation and the statistical-methodological basic conditions were largely lacking in the first instance5. This was a typical case of the often-deplored practice without theory. The blame for this is not only the fact that practitioners (i.e. empiricists) often are not very good theoreticians or else they are not at all theoreticians (the opposite is also true, unfortunately), but also the fact that information gathering is often subject to pressure from deadlines which often do not leave sufficient time frame for the time-consuming theoretical considerations.

The two IFO trade cycle surveys, the business test and the investment test, have widened the information spectrum of empirical economic research. In addition to information in quantitative and tendential form (“more”/“same”/“less”) via processes, which partly were not considered for a long time in official statistics (e.g. changes in orders on book and in investments), or are still not accounted for (e.g. utilization of capacity, extent of orders on hook measured in months of production), special mention should he made of the evaluation and anticipation variahles of the IFO Business Survey. Those variables represent the entrepreneurs’ evaluations of and reactions on economic events.

Other than after the 1966/67 recession there has not been any autonomous or accelerating upswing in West German business after the 1975 recession. Private investment activities, in particular, lacked momentum despite the government programmes to step up business. What is the reason for this disappointing course of business? Is it caused exclusively by objective facts — such as perhaps lower profit margins, greater pressure of international competition, signs of saturation in important fields of consumer goods — or do extra-economic factors play a decisive role, as for instance, the general pessimism about economic growth, socio-political uncertainty or restriction felt as to the entrepreneurial scope, etc.?

Die an elektrischen Apparaten auftretenden Beanspruchungen durch Wanderwellen werden fur Prufzwecke mit Hilfe von Stosspannungen nachgeahmt. Die Erzeugung solcher Stosspannungen mit Spannungshohen bis zu einigen Millionen Volt wurde erst durch die von E MAnx im Jahre 1924 angegebene Vielfachschaltung ermoglicht. Die mit dieser Schaltung durchgefuhrte eingehende Erforschung der Uberspannungsvorgange wurde stark gefordert durch den etwa zur gleichen Zeit entwickelten Kathodenstrahl-Oszillographen, der den zeitlichen Verlauf der Uberspannungen in allen Einzelheiten aufzuzeichnen vermag.

Den Entladeverzug kann man in zwei zeitlich aufeinanderfolgende Abschnitte einteilen: in seine statistische Streuzeit, das ist der Zeitabschnitt, in dem die Anfangselektronen der einzelnen Elektronenlawinen gebildet werden, und in die eigentliche Aufbauzeit, in der irgendeines der in der Streuzeit gebildeten Anfangselektronen einen so gunstigen Lawinenablauf nach sich zieht, das durch ihn der Uberschlag eingeleitet wird. Die Aufbauzeit im Entladeverzug ist demnach gleichzeitig der kurzest mogliche Wert des Entladeverzugs.