Car designer raises awareness on EVs’ advantages

Despite many components of electric vehicles (EV) not being biodegradable, a car designer suggests the public see the good side of the story.

The comments were made by car designer Filipe Bragança on the sidelines of a breakfast briefing organized by the France Macau Chamber of Commerce (FMCC).

In an EV, the battery and the computer circuits at least are not biodegradable. Not only are they not biodegradable, they are even toxic to the ecosystem. Moreover, the generation of electricity is not necessarily clean. Many countries are struggling to find space to store nuclear waste from the generation of this type of power.

When answering this, Bragança said: “Practically, in daily life, as a [means of] commuter [transport], EVs are very user-friendly when moving from point A to B. An EV has 70% less components in comparison to an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle.”

He sees this as the main advantage in EV to ICE car in terms of environmental friendliness. “If we look in this perspective, EVs are environmentally friendly. Many [parts] in the supply chain can be cut,” he said. However, Bragança pointed out that in reality, the situation is different.

“Currently, we are witnessing the fourth generation of EVs, which have their own production lines,” he explained. “In the coming generations, the production will be even more environmentally friendly.”

He then blamed the size of current EVs as not being appealing enough to attract new users. Many current EV models are at least 5 meters in length, he said, with a relatively heavy body, making the footprint significant. They also need huge batteries to support their own bodies.

Bragança also pointed out that the manufacturing process of the battery used on EVs requires “an astronomical amount of energy”, making the component even less environmentally friendly.

“This is not the optimization of EV technologies,” he said.

His optimized vision of the means of transportation is a simple chassis on top of four wheels, with two or four seats on the chassis. According to the academic, they should have light weights and easy controllability.

“People get into the car, press a button and go,” he explained. “When they press the button again, they can go home.”

Today’s EVs, he said, use a lot of small components. “This is what we aim for,” he said. “We can [then] find entrepreneurs to make that, from which they can make money.”

Many EVs, furthermore, are not designed to last, as the academic explained. These cars are only designed to operate for about five years, after which the owners are expected to replace them. This is also a burden on the sustainability factor, he said.

A number of existing EVs have an inexpensive price tag during the manufacturing phase, but when they go into the showrooms, their price tags are replaced with a vastly inflated version, according to the academic.

“For daily usage, having an EV is much better for the common driver than having an ICE car,” Bragança explained. “[However], in terms of the initial price, EVs are too expensive for car owners.”

According to the information on Bragança as distributed by the FMCC, he started his career in automotive design in Switzerland at Franco Sbarro in 1992, where he designed a number of concepts, among which is the 1992 SWATCH car, later SMART Benz.

Appointed Global Design Director at IDIADA China Shanghai in 2016, he was responsible for the full design development of the Lowest world CX record SEAT CRONUZ compact Electric crossover.