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57 AutoData | December 2018 Divulgação/Audi IT IS SENNA’S FAULT Mid 90s: a young Thomas Mueller, accompanied by his German industrial father, goes to a restaurant in São Paulo. Parked in front of it, there is an Audi 100, a novelty equivalent to a flying saucer. Still surprised in his youthful fantasy, the teenager Thomas identifies the owner at a distant table: it is Ayrton Senna, happily having his meal accompanied by Adriane Galisteu. “Until then, the model of my dreams was the VWSantana Executive. That Audi changed my reference regarding cars and at that very moment I decided that it was in that company that I would like to work.” Since the age of 13, he studied at a German school and attended the birth- place of the Brazilian automotive industry (São Bernardo do Campo, at the ABCD region of São Paulo) because his father’s machinery industrywas in Riacho Grande. But this was not enough to attract him to the region: at the beginning of maturity, he chose to live in Germany where he studied mechanical engineering. In 2000, he worked at Mercedes-Benz and fulfilled his youthful determination when joining Audi the following year. He met his wife, a Brazilian lady from Vitória, ES, in Munich. Today, they have two children (born in Germany) aged 7 and 10 years. Thomas comes to Brazil about twice a year and that’s why he knows well the infrastructure of our cities and roads. Exactly for that, he believes the appli- cation of autonomous cars in Brazil will be Thomas Mueller had his reference of modern car on VW Santana Executivo. Today, he coordinates the team that makes Audi models drive by themselves LOOK, MOM, NO HANDS! Thomas showing autonomous technology in Germany: he knows it is not going to happen in Brazil.