The urban design is green, and the transportation design must be efficient.

——Enea Colombo

Enea Colombo has more than 25 years of experience in both the manufacturing and sales industries. He is now the global general manager of Icona Design Group. He served as general manager of China and global division of UFI Group, the third largest independent filtration company in the world, and sales director of Pall Group. Now, he is the president of China and global division of UFI Group.

Intelligent travel, as one of the main achievements of the fourth industrial revolution, has become an important grasp of global manufacturing production and upgrading. So, we started to think about what the future travel will look like? How can we redesign travel in the future? How can we improve the efficiency of travel? How can we make travel more sustainable?

At the Xiongan Design Forum of the Hebei International Industrial Design Week 2021, Mr. Enea Colombo, Global General Manager of Italy’s Icona Design Group, delivered a keynote speech on the future of travel and building the future world with design, with the theme of “New Carriers: Help the Future of Intelligent Cities.” Regarding the future city, Enea Colombo mentioned these key words: intelligence, interconnection, delivery, sustainability and livability. He said that the future of urban design needs to put people in the first place, which is served for people, not just emphasize aesthetics. The future city pursues efficiency, safety, and zero carbon emissions, and now that smart technologies are available, it is hoped that the viable smart technologies already available can be used to design and build the world of the future.

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The Efficiency of of Intelligent Travel in the Future

As cities continue to grow and the populations increase dramatically, we need to make cities more efficient with vehicles, make travel energy more sustainable, and greatly reduce the commuting time.

Enea Colombo used driverless cars to illustrate that the efficiency of intelligent travel should not only consider the travel of vehicles and people, but also the flow of goods and materials, including transport containers, the last mile of goods, and distribution within the city, etc., which is also directly realized by driverless cars. However, the regulations and infrastructure for driverless cars are not ready yet, so the Icona Group has designed a functional modular product - a boat-shaped utility chassis. The chassis has an interactive information screen, battery and power system. By loading different facilities, it transforms into a leisure sightseeing boat, a restaurant, and a personal vertical irrigation farm respectively. That is, there are more different functions inside a module, while they have the same base frame.

At the same time, the Icona Group has proposed a new concept of using small robots for cargo transportation, which can deliver couriers directly to offices or homes for convenient delivery.

In the city of the future, you can also use the app to call a car, compile your daily schedule and go to different corners of the city through this car. Enea Colombo said: “When you want to go shopping you can get out of the car and go shopping directly, and when you want to eat, the car can automatically go to the parking. If you need to charge, you don’t have to go to a charging station, you can use the autonomous vehicle cell phone program to call the charging unit to find a car, and the future will be such a convenient and efficient system”.

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The Sustainability of Intelligent Travel in the Future

At the forum, Enea Colombo said that intelligent travel should be focused on the new energy systems of the future. The city of the future is very efficient, so the energy we generate needs to be sustainable in order to avoid CO₂ emissions. Enya Columbus said: “Hydrogen energy, as a hot new energy windfall, has been a major concern due to the problem of safe extraction and difficult storage. By using the new hydrogen technology to achieve safe storage at low pressure, the Icona Group can be expected to be a source of energy for future cars or electric vehicles”.

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The Beauty of Intelligent Travel in the Future

According to Enea Colombo, in addition to intelligent and efficient travel modes and sustainability of new energy sources, ecological aesthetics of design should also be considered in the future cities. In the future, the city will not only have autonomous vehicles, but also new energy devices such as solar energy, and the appearance should be designed to match the style of the whole city so that it can bring people a sense of beauty and happiness.

Nowadays, new technologies and new models are accelerating the iterative upgrading of the global travel industry, which requires comprehensive innovation of the whole industry chain. Industrial design is not only product renovation, but also the integration of creativity, science and technology, fine arts, etc., which endows products with new vitality. Use new carriers to help smart cities, vigorously develop new modes and new ways of transportation services, and accelerate the creation of a new picture of high-quality and inclusive digital life. In the future, our life will be better!