"Mobility of the future: a new generation of vehicles"

Peter Maskus

Peter Maskus has worked in Porsche, Ariane Aerospace, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. He later became one of Toyota's main manufacturing process experts. His radical and innovative ideas on new mobility concepts have led him to create is own company, Acabion.

"The future of individual traffic is both: Extremely efficient, and hence very, very fast"

Due to the celebration of the Forum of Reflection on the Future, organised by the OPTI Foundation, that will be held on 28th May, it has been performed the next interview with one of our speakers, Peter Maskus


OPTI: Which are the main characteristics of future car?

P.M.: The key characteristic of any future car will be a very low energy consumption in a range of 2 KWh per 100 km and less, instead of 12 KWh per 100 km and more, like todays electric cars. It is just not acceptable any more to waste energy useless, no matter if that wasted energy would be generated from coal, oil, gas, hydrogen or solar power plants.

Other main characteristics will refer to superior comfort, better than today, to full automation and to a dramatically better safety of travelling, with intelligent control systems actively preventing accidents and avoiding any crash.

OPTI: How do you visualize the mobility inside the city and between cities? Will it take a new infrastructure model?

P.M. In the next few years more efficient cars will come up and use the old road systems. In the long run of 2050 and later these crafts -- due to their superior aerodynamic abilities -- will develop such a speed potential, as a side-effect, that people will think about highspeed-interlinks between big cities. The future of individual traffic is both: Extremely efficient, and hence very, very fast.

OPTI: Which are the main barriers to put in practice the new mobility models?

P.M.: The only barriers are in our brains. If we want speeds of 300 mph and up at "Queen-Mary-II-comfort" and "Shinkanzen-Train-Safety", we will have it. The technologies to do it are all here. We must just want it, and allow it to happen, and step back from blockades of some lobbies and from futile traditionalistic technology-patterns.