From tyre trade to digital steering of the future

From vision to reality

Schaeffler Paravan is a young, dynamic and creative company of visionaries, tinkerers and developers with one big goal - to digitally advance the steering of the future. International software and hardware specialists are working under high pressure in Aichelau and Herzogenaurach to further develop the multi-award-winning Space Drive technology (including the Rudolf Diesel Medal 2021) and adapt it to the needs of future mobility, towards the central control unit for autonomous driving in Level 5. With the founding of Schaeffler Paravan as a joint venture between Schaeffler Technologies and PARAVAN, visionary and managing partner Roland Arnold has set the course for the future, towards mobility without a mechanical steering column. 

Aimed at digital steering

Schaeffler Paravan Technologie GmbH & Co. KG is a company specialising in the development of fail-safe drive-by-wire systems - "Space Drive" - and chassis system solutions. Schaeffler Paravan was founded in 2018 as a joint venture (90 % Schaeffler Technologies AG, 10 % Roland Arnold). The Space Drive system developed by Roland Arnold was completely transferred to the joint venture and will be industrialised there. Schaeffler Paravan is convinced that the future of steering is digital and multi-redundant.

Building on Experience - The Space Drive Story

Roland Arnold, founder and Managing Director of Paravan GmbH and CEO of Schaeffler Paravan Technologie GmbH & Co. KG, lost his father in a tragic accident in his early youth. As an adult, he struggles to make ends meet with a small tyre business and earns extra money as a contract harvester.

The turning point of his life occurred in 1997 on a desolate motorway car park: in the pouring rain he helped an overtaxed woman to lift her paraplegic husband into the car. The spontaneous action became the birth of Paravan. His vision: to give people with disabilities their mobility and joy of life back. In a garage on his brother's farm, he tirelessly tinkered with new types of individual vehicles for the disabled. Early on, he focused on the development of a revolutionary drive-by-wire system (Space Drive) to make even people with the most severe disabilities mobile again. In 2003 he obtains his first patents and the first Space Drive generation leaves the halls at home. In 2005, Paravan GmbH is founded. The state-of-the-art, 50,000 square metre mobility park is built in Pfronstetten-Aichelau, a town with 270 inhabitants.

Since 2009, Paravan GmbH has been the world market leader for individually adapted vehicles for the disabled. More than 180 employees now work in subsidiaries and cooperations all over the world, even in Australia and New Zealand. The highlight is the world's first road-approved drive-by-wire system Space Drive II with active redundancy. A fail-safe, digital control system for flexible use in safety-relevant automotive applications based on state-of-the-art drive-by-wire technology. The technology is road-approved, the computer unit (ECU) fulfils the highest requirements according to the ISO 26262 ASIL D safety standards. In addition, the drive-by-wire ECUs are manufactured in accordance with the world's highest quality level IPC-A-600 Class 3. Over the past 17 years, Paravan has accumulated a good one billion kilometres of experience with the system worldwide. Experience that has always flowed into the further development of the Space Drive drive-by-wire system. In the meantime, the Paravan Space Drive system has been successfully used in numerous vehicles and autonomous driving projects by renowned vehicle manufacturers, automotive suppliers and research institutes.

Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG and the owner of Paravan GmbH, Roland Arnold, founded the joint venture Schaeffler Paravan Technologie GmbH & Co. KG was founded. The new company took over the drive-by-wire technology and all related activities of Paravan GmbH in October 2018 and will further develop the technology in the future.