Aachen, Cologne Region, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

🇩🇪 Aachen isvthe 13th-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. Aachen is the seat of the City Region Aachen. Aachen developed from a Roman settlement and spa, subsequently becoming the preferred medieval Imperial residence of Emperor Charlemagne of the Frankish Empire, and, from 936 to 1531, the place where 31 Holy Roman Emperors were crowned Kings of the Germans.

One of Germany's leading institutes of higher education in technology, the RWTH Aachen University (Rheinisch-Westfälisch Technische Hochschule Aachen), is located in the city. Its university hospital Uniklinik RWTH Aachen is Europe's largest single-building hospital. Aachen's industries include science, engineering and information technology. In 2009, Aachen was ranked eighth among cities in Germany for innovation.

The regional dialect spoken in the city is a Central Franconian, Ripuarian variant with strong Limburgish influences from the dialects in the neighbouring Netherlands. As a Rhenish city, Aachen is one of the main centres of carnival celebrations in Germany, along with Cologne, Mainz and Düsseldorf. The culinary speciality the city is best known for are Aachener Printen, a type of gingerbread.

Economy Aachen is the administrative centre for the coal-mining industries in neighbouring places to the north-east.

Products manufactured in Aachen include electrical goods, textiles, foodstuffs (chocolate and candy), glass, machinery, rubber products, furniture, metal products. Also in and around Aachen chemicals, plastics, cosmetics, and needles and pins are produced. Though once a major player in Aachen's economy, today glassware and textile production make up only 10% of total manufacturing jobs in the city. There have been a number of spin-offs from the university's IT technology department.

Electric vehicle manufacturing In June 2010, Achim Kampker, together with Günther Schuh, founded a small company to develop Street Scooter GmbH; in August 2014, it was renamed StreetScooter GmbH. This was a privately organised research initiative at the RWTH Aachen University which later became an independent company in Aachen. Kampker was also the founder and chairman of the European Network for Affordable and Sustainable Electromobility. In May 2014, the company announced that the city of Aachen, the city council Aachen and the savings bank Aachen had ordered electric vehicles from the company. In late 2014, approximately 70 employees were manufacturing 200 vehicles annually in the premises of the Waggonfabrik Talbot, the former Talbot/Bombardier plant in Aachen.

In December 2014 Deutsche Post DHL Group purchased the StreetScooter company, which became its wholly owned subsidiary. By April 2016, the company announced that it would produce 2000 of its electric vans branded Work in Aachen by the end of the year. In 2015, the electric vehicle start-up e.GO Mobile was founded by Günther Schuh, which started producing the e.GO Life electric passenger car and other vehicles in April 2019. In April 2016, StreetScooter GmbH announced that it would be scaling up to manufacture approximately 10,000 of the Work vehicles annually, starting in 2017, also in Aachen. If that goal is achieved, it will become the largest electric light utility vehicle manufacturer in Europe, surpassing Renault which makes the smaller Kangoo Z.E.