‘It was all Roger’: tennis champion Federer wants to take the tedium out of EV charging
Music was Roger Federer’s competition prelude, and he’s collaborating with an audio entrepreneur on soundtracks to relax electric-vehicle drivers while they wait.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that a man who famously had all the grace and speed of a panther on the tennis court liked to nap like a cat off it.
And yet, compared to the thumping head phones on Nick Kyrgios before every game, or Lleyton Hewitt’s famous Eye of the Tiger rev-up, the idea that Roger Federer would simply lie down and snooze before his biggest matches seems a little incongruous.
And yet that’s how the now-retired, immaculately groomed 20-time major winner says he preferred to approach his games. Music was always his competition wind-down, not wind-up.
“I always liked to find a quiet place, just sit and focus, push away the distractions,” Federer explained to a rapt audience at the Munich International Mobility Show recently. “It’s not for everyone but it worked for me.”
Yes, the Fed Express was the master of the power nap, happy to slip on the Sennheisers and nod off for 15 to 20 minutes at the kind of moments that would see most athletes bouncing with stress.
The Swiss Federer has been a Mercedes brand ambassador for 15 years, long enough inside the corporate tent to win trust and be drawn into the company’s consumer-side research and development programs, and his latest effort was to help the company develop a power-napping feature for motorists to use while waiting for their Benz EVs to recharge.
Federer took an interest in the research work by Stuttgart-based composer, audio engineer, musicologist and researcher Professor Florian Kappler, who was working on a new car luxury audio program known as “Energising Comfort’’.
It may sound a little hippie, but “Energising Comfort” is actually a science-based audio approach, supported by Professor Kappler’s company, Klangerfinder (“sound finder”), to make drivers and passengers feel soothed.
“Sound has a massive influence on our lives and yet we are constantly surrounded by visual sensory overload; so often everything we interpret through our various senses is overwhelmed by what we are seeing,’’ Professor Kappler said.
“And yet our ears are directly connected to our limbic system, which processes and regulates our emotions. It’s why we are so deeply moved and emotionally connected to our favourite music.’’
The softly spoken professor cited the example of famous Star Wars film producer George Lucas, whom he said understood this emotional connection “very, very well’’.
Lucas spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in the sound-engineering studio with acoustics researcher Tomlinson Holman (founder of the legendary sound effects company THX) to get the film score and audio effects perfect.
“I think it’s one of the reasons why his films were so successful,’’ he said. “He [Lucas] identified how important audio was to the whole cinema experience.’’
With Kappler’s company signed up by many in the car business to develop sounds that suit particular legislative requirements, his latest research taps into the fresh wind-down opportunities that EV-recharging times offer.
For the discernible future, despite the arrival of 800-volt battery architecture and 400-volt ultra-fast chargers, a time delay of between 15-20 minutes to recharge an EV appears to be an accepted industry standard.
Federer listened in to the Mercedes “Energising Comfort” audio track and felt he could add value.
“The power-nap facet of the program was all Roger,’’ Professor Kappler said.
And what has the power to soothe an anxious Fed? Well the answer is very Swiss – it’s the sound of the gently lapping shoreline waters of Lake Zurich.
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