Thetis - All made in Arsenale Venice

Press release

The first tour of Italy by electric car will arrive in Mestre on 1 June

30 May 2011 – On 1 June the first tour of Italy by electric car, promoted by the association “Corrente in Movimento” with the support of the Ministry of the Environment, will arrive in Piazza Ferretto in Mestre, bringing it very close to Venice, the city where the GPS technology used in the 500 electric vehicles participating in the tour was developed.

Thetis, an engineering company based in the Venice Arsenal, is the technical partner providing the hardware and software for the vehicle position tracking system. This system has two main functions: to continually transmit the vehicle’s location, speed and any other on-board data to a control centre (this information will also be available on the “Corrente in Movimento” website); and to provide the drivers with a navigation system that interacts with the route planning system at the control centre as well as on-board devices, reading the battery charge level and checking it against the availability of recharge stations (both slow and fast) in the vicinity.
The tour, which left Rome on 8 May, provides an opportunity to bring together and publicize the small and medium businesses, public administrations, universities and research centres that have contributed in recent years to making Italy more sustainable.

To mark the zero emissions tour’s arrival in Mestre, there will be stands, informational materials, educational workshops and opportunities to test drive electric vehicles on Via Poerio, near Piazza Ferretto in Mestre from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
When developing the complex hardware and software used in the 500 electric vehicles, Thetis drew on its national and international experience in the field of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). In fact, Thetis played a leading role in performing the sustainability assessment analysis for the islands in Chongming County (China), conducted studies relating to sustainable mobility management in Beijing (China) and New Delhi (India) and participated in numerous projects in other countries, including Croatia, Romania, Libya, Thailand, and, most recently, Malta.

Press Office

Knowledge Management Office and Press Office
Thetis SpA
Tel. 041 2406111
Fax 041 5210292

Contact: Giannandrea Mencini

Mobile 347 2823781

Michela Raccanello

Orange PR – Gruppo REM
Tel. 0432 179 33 50
Fax. 0432 179 33 60

Alberto Rochira

Mobile 347 3354320

Anna Maria Toldo