Autobahn

Hütter and Schneider composed it and Emil Schult collaborated on the lyrics. It is the first Kraftwerk track with sung words, and it was released only with German lyrics. The song is meant to capture the feel of driving on a motorway. Hütter called it a sound painting and listed the sounds that went in: car sounds, horns, tuning motors, the glide of tyres on asphalt. Flür described it as a journey from Düsseldorf to Hamburg. Hütter told the Guardian that the band had no money for hotels in those days and drove the autobahn in his old grey Volkswagen. A Minimoog plays the bass line, Schneider plays flute, a vocoder treats some of the vocals and a motorik drum rhythm runs through the final section.

The refrain, "fahren, fahren, fahren," was often mistaken for "fun, fun, fun." Flür said it had nothing to do with the Beach Boys, although Hütter has named the Beach Boys as an influence.

Single and afterlife

An import single first got airplay on a Chicago radio station, after which Vertigo released single and album in the United States. The single edit reached number 11 in Britain, 25 on the Billboard Hot 100, 9 in Germany and 12 in Canada, and Billboard noted that it remained the group's only Hot 100 top 40 hit. A twelve-minute animated video directed by Roger Mainwood came out in 1979, and a nine-minute version was recorded for The Mix in 1991. Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark named it as the song he wished he had written and said it changed his life.

An Internet Archive recording from Cologne on 22 March 1975 has the band playing it after Ruckzuck and the two Kometenmelodie pieces, and a cut version closes the set recorded at the Paradiso in Amsterdam on 11 September 1976.