The eighth and last eCarTec took place in Munich, Germany, on Oct. 18 to 20 last year. There will be another conference about electric transportation in fall in the Bavarian state capital, but its new name is “eMove360°” and it will offer a wider variety of topics about “Transportation 4.0” (electric transportation, connected and autonomous driving, materials and design).

The reason for the name change has been a behind-the-scenes, months-long legal battle about the rights to the eCarTec name. Confusion had already settled in prior to the eCarTec 2016, when MunichExpo Veranstaltungs GmbH seemed to announce a “change in name,” but the conference that followed was still called eCarTec (see eCarTec Keeps Its Name – For Now). The back and forth was a result of the name having been trademarked in November 2008 by Sieghard “Simmy” Schnabel, who later fell out with the organizer, MunichExpo, over the conference topics and trademark use.

After Robert Metzger, CEO of MunichExpo, had been successful in trademarking “eMove 360” in August 2015, he announced the eMove360° as a new “trade show concept” in April the following year. Even back then, he declared: “The eCarTec is history.” But he later changed his statement by saying that in 2016 “the eCarTec and eMove360 will take place at the same time.” Thus, the eighth eCarTec was basically the first eMove360, something most attendees probably won’t have noticed.

In November 2016, Metzger told H2-international about the plans for 2017: “We no longer organize an eCarTec.” He said that the eMove360° was a new tradeshow which “combines all topics …

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In the meantime, Simmy Schnabel has been looking to find a “large trade show organizer” for his eCarTec. As he put it: “I designed that conference.”

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