Athanasios Tubidis - Peugeot
Summary presentation Athanasios Tubidis, D-Day Wednesday 26 October
The presentation begins with a film about (the history of) Peugeot, how Peugeot started with coffee grinders, and subsequently starting manufacturing bicycles, cars and racing cars.
Tubidis states that due to the increasing individualisation (he himself calls it ‘personalisation’) brands will fade. Not only that: even products like cars and bikes will have an increasingly hybrid character (NB. In this context, hybrid does not refer to the use of electricity and gasoline to drive the engine). This is a guiding idea in the development of the concept car Peugeot BB1, a hybrid vehicle.
The vehicle has features of both a car and a scooter (steering wheel, control panel). Although Tubidis speaks of ‘the smallest car ever’, there is room for four people. Getting in or out of the car unhurriedly takes less than three minutes. The seats are high: one has a comfortable seating position and a good view. The vehicle is obviously designed for ‘inner city use’: it’s manoeuvrable, quiet, electric, needs little parking place, and is no longer tailored to ‘linear transportation’. The vehicle is not suitable for the motorway.
Tubidis places this hybrid vehicle in a tradition of ‘urban’ designs: ‘objects born from their own environment’, just like the skateboard, the folding bike (which is experiencing a revival) and the Smartphone ... These products are increasingly used to ‘present your urban self’, to be seen - and therefore to expose one’s own identity. This ‘smallest car ever’ is also a gesture. There is little or no new technology involved; existing technologies are personalised. The lecture ends with a film that is a hip and happy illustration of the multi-use of the concept car in an urban environment: from a one-seater, the car transforms into a two-seater, and then just as easily into a four-seater.
About Athanasios Tubidis
Athanasios has received an education in physics and architecture/urban design. After completing his studies in Europe he specialised in transportation design. He worked independently as architect and designer in USA and Japan and lived in Chicago, Osaka, Milan, London, Athens, Lausanne. Athanassios is engaged by the automotive industry for a number of years.
Currently working at PSA PEUGEOT AUTOMOBILES, he is fully involved into sustainable solutions for future of personal transportation.
Design coffee: Wednesday, October 26
