Hasta La Ideas

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pemTop: Mistubishi ‘i’ Miev outside London’s Royal College of Art. Bottom: the panel from left: Geoff Hollington of Made, Nico Sergent of Riversimple, Nick Talbot of Seymour Powell, Rob Hodway of Giraffe Innovation, Artur Mausbach of RCA, and Richard Windsor of RCA Vehicle Design senior tutor and panel debate host./em/p

pemGuest post by Joseph Simpson./em/p

pb”Seriously now, where is the sustainable vehicle design?”/b/p

pThe notion of a ‘new paradigm in car design’ was the uniting theme behind talks by five panelists at London’s Royal College of Art last week, who debated “Seriously now, where is the sustainable vehicle design?”/p

pThe timing is perhaps pertinent. Sustainability, and the search for the green car is the ongoing issue for an auto industry that is far from recovered from the crisis it underwent during 2009. Furthermore, as a href=”http://www.icsid.org/feature/current/articles835.htm”Peter Naumann’s recent essay/a has pointed out, the car designer’s role is oft reduced to tinkering around the edgesmdash;adjusting a crease line here, altering highlights by a millimeter there. Therefore the key question for themdash;predominantly studentmdash;audience in London last week, appeared to be how they reconcile their need and desire for employment, against a gnawing sense that the industry is increasingly out of step with wider society, and is simply too big and too established to affect meaningful change./p

pCertainly, there was broad agreement among the panel that a truly sustainable form of personal transportation is unlikely to emerge from an established automotive brand. Nico Sergent of a href=”http://www.riversimple.com/”Riversimple/a succinctly explained why: “The auto industry is very mature, they are large and so are good at inertiamdash;they find it hard to change. But the world is rapidly changing – demand for mobility is increasing, yet at the same time decreasing resources are available, and the industry is increasingly regulated.”/p

pSergent went on to explain how Riversimple’s business modelmdash;based on open-source design development principals, and a leased mobility package based around a lightweight hydrogen car, incentivises the company to make their vehicle as efficient and long-lasting as possible, the inverse of what happens in the automotive world today. /p

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pemNico Sergent of Riversimple introduces the company’s carbon fibre, hydrogen fuel-cell car/em/p

pYet in the context of sustainability, car companies have long protested that they are simply providing consumers with what they want. Implicit in this idea is that the majority of consumers still aren’t truly interested in a sustainable car; something that RCA PhD student, Artur Mausbach, addressed. “Design must communicate the benefits of sustainability,” he suggested, before warning that the industry’s current business model is living on borrowed time: “Car design is locked inside a cage. It seems that car design has missed the change of pace of context, and the changing demands of the user. It is now haunted by increasing ethical concerns.” /pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/events/reflections_on_the_sustainable_vehicle_design_forum_at_the_royal_college_of_art_16503.asp”(more…)/a
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