BEST asked Friedrich Grupe, CEO Digatron Power Electronics GmbH for his view of the German battery infrastructure. BEST: Could you give us an overview of the German battery manufacturing infrastructure, and the peculiarities of the German market that work to its advantage and disadvantage. They are the result of a German energy policy over the last 25 years that has been ideologically driven and, in my view, misguided. But are there any advantages to this system, and how well does battery research in German universities and institutions integrate into the German battery industry? When these three factors come together, German battery research can be very successfully translated into products and production processes.