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The Future of Smart Mobility with Dr. Carlo Van de Weijer

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“Public transport always comes with a cost and always comes with a large subsidy.” — Dr. Carlo Van de Weijer

Dr. Carlo Van de Weijer serves as director of the Strategic Area Smart Mobility at Eindhoven University of Technology. With an extended background in the high-tech and automotive industry, he is familiar with the always-changing world of logistics and transportation. 

Since the advent of the first motorized vehicle in 1879, the auto industry has faced constant change and disruption. Today, the logical next step for cars is automation. Dr. Carlo sheds some light on the digitization of vehicles and sees a future in which mobility services will greatly change public transport as we know it.

“One of the most important things missing with self-driving cars is, what is the problem that you are solving with the new kind of system? It is a fantastic way of transporting yourself, but will it be better than the current system?”

On this episode, Mission Producer Austin Craig sits down with Dr. Carlo to highlight future trends within mobility, from electric bikes to self-driving vehicles, and their impact on society.

P.S. Thanks to our partner, b8ta, this week we will be giving away three Pocketalk voice translators. The Pocketalk supports up to 74 languages and uses built-in mobile data to provide two-way foreign language translations in real time. Enter the giveaway for a chance to win by going to www.mission.org/giveaway. 

Quotes from Carlo:

“We will have a battle for space. Theoretically, you will need less parking space but on the road, there will be a low capacity for individual transportation with self-driving cars. This will not be the best solution for the problems that we are facing in the future.”

“We should always ask, is it beneficial for the economy if we invest in making connections quicker? Because that’s the only effect that you will achieve when solving congestion, making trades faster, etc. People will not travel in less time, they will just travel further.”

“Self-driving cars will not be programmed to flexibly interpret the law and flexibly interpreting the law is necessary in order to survive everyday traffic.”

“Separate from how we travel and how active we travel, we do not want to travel much more than one hour per day.  We are most happy with the 20 to 40 minutes of commuting and still leaving some time for leisure.”

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Episode 327