The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

F.3 Mobility and Design

The design goal is to explore new and alternative means of mobility for car travel. The noticeable aspect here is that most people do prefer to use a car in most situations, even though a car comes with many problems. The need for new mobility designs to move away from cars has a strong sustainability motivation. The combination of design and technology needs to pave the way for consumers to show the development and demonstration of alternative means of transportation, the application of new energy sources, demand management, niche mobility, and services. The objective is to fine-tune the balance between the individual transport market and public transport opportunities.

One of the main themes over recent years has been identifying options for the optimization of products and services; this includes chain mobility research, multimodality research, and consumer research. From the previous studies, several conclusions for the roadmap of urban mobility can be drawn (Silvester et al., 2010; Van Timmeren et al., 2010). The most important ones are:

• Mobility product development and demonstration provide more opportunities for integral testing and for improving the market worthiness of artifacts.
• Advanced technologies, alternative energy sources, and materials are applied to functionalities like lightweight commuting and intermodal chain mobility options.
• Cooperation of knowledge institutions and companies in the initial stages of product development gives the ...