Not Just A Pretty Face

Laying the First Brick?

In my March 15th blog, I explained how I felt cheated by the lack of real breakthroughs in transportation design during the last several decades, but a recent concept reveal may have changed my opinion…partly.

A couple of weeks ago, GM announced that three concepts, called Electric Network-Vehicles (EN-Vs), would be on display at the SAIC-GM pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai beginning this May. The concepts, each designed at a different GM global design center, are intended to be possible solutions for personal mobility and urban congestion problems in major metropolitan areas around the world.

Urban congestion is ever-growing. Have you driven in L.A., Atlanta, Chicago or Washington D.C. lately? Whew. And these cities are tiny compared to some of the biggies around the world. (Think New York is big? It’s currently 13th by population, less than five-eights the size of Shanghai). It’s estimated that by 2030, 60% of the world’s people – projected to be 8 billion – will live in urban areas.

Common sense tells us that it’s gonna be tough packing in all those folks AND their vehicles. Experience tells us that not everyone wants to ride a bus, subway, bicycle or walk everywhere they go (remember rain, snow and sleet?).

The EN-Vs are reported to be all-electric (no pollution), able to be driven manually or autonomously, high-tech (use of innovative materials and components) and about one-third the size of a typical vehicle (more space on the road, less space to park). Vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, GPS/sensors/cameras and distance-sensing technology would reduce traffic congestion and eliminate accidents. Like all concepts, there’s a large amount of “the proposed technology should be available by then,” but it certainly seems plausible.

Are there problems associated with this direction? Tons of them. Where does the power come from? How do other forms of transport and pedestrians share space with these? Since it would probably require a new type of infrastructure, how would we pay for it? Where would it fit? Where would we store and access current vehicle types used for longer trips and with actual cargo capacity? The list goes on.

If you want to do something “fun and easy,” jump on the negative bandwagon with some of the armchair quarterbacks who are making snarky comments to the cautiously neutral media stories written about these concepts. As for me, I’d rather associate with people who are actually trying to accomplish something – even if it seems highly improbable.

I think it’s a step in the right direction. The concepts address legitimate problems – how to transport an increasingly dense population while accommodating the innate desire for individual freedom and style. These are not just sculptural exercises – most likely, no beauty awards will be handed out here. But even if we never see these exact vehicles on the road in the future, additional ideas by other creative minds, possibly generated by these early directional proposals, may be tomorrow’s game-changers in transportation systems.

Thinking out of the box has to start somewhere, or else you stay inside the same box.