My name is Christopher Wallenreiter and I'm in Berlin to meet Mercedes-Benz futurologist Alexander Mankowsky.
He's an expert when it comes to the future of transportation,
so I'm extremely excited to talk to him about how our world will look in the future
and what projects Mercedes-Benz Vans is already developing today.
Hey Alexander, thanks for having me!
Why is electric drive so important for the future of transportation?
Well, there are two issues one thing is that we have to avoid CO2 because of global warming.
Pollution is a different thing,
pollution is about noise,
if you talk about electrical vans, they can deliver at night, where people are living, they are quieter.
How do you think the use of electric vans is going to change in the future?
Yeah, again it's more about the computation.
What I think what's most important most people forget.
Electric means it's easier to compute what the cars and the devices are doing.
You have to think about systems, cybernetics to make it seamless.
And if you ask about the ecological footprint of all these things, you can make them much more efficient.
Electric drive will more and more play an important role.
And Mercedes-Benz Vans is already working on these kinds of alternatives.
But what challenges do we have to deal with when it comes to our future society?
What do you think how is our society going to look like in let's say 40 years, 50 years?
From a transportation perspective, we will find that it is not delivery anymore,
but it's more transportation of goods to consume and goods which are produced.
So, people will decentralise more than today because of many reasons:
the attractive city centres are full, many people are many people are creative, they are doing something and they will go outside.
And the new is that it will be not so suburban style like before, but more community oriented style.
So how do you think are we going to change the delivery systems?
My guess is that the people outside there will produce some of their goods themselves.
Not only the goods for themselves, but the goods for other people, too.
So, we will not only have delivery like today, delivery of consumer goods to the outside.
So, if you are there and you have a community and you produce something together maybe
then you'll need not delivery vans like it was, but vans or devices which get your goods to consumers..
The model of the future is much more about self-organized and networked.
Therefore, you need a different system or different technology, a different connectivity in vans, drones.
So, if there's more delivery and there's a trend of decentralisation and de-urbanisation:
What roles does a van play in this?
A van will play a major role.
That's the hidden favourite, the hidden champion as people say.
So, a van is just a box, in a way.
A box, which is moveable and in this box, you can transport not only goods, any goods,
you can have it set as a workshop, you can live there if you like.
Deurbanisation will increase the need for multi-way transportation.
But how can we guarantee that the increasing number of orders will be delivered to scattered places even faster?
So I'm wondering with trends like deurbanisation and decentralisation, what are we as a society coping with,
can machines help us there?
Yes, they will be foundation of that.
You have cultural innovation as you said, the reorganization and so on and a different way to work and life,
but the machines, the connectivity, the cloud, the smart systems - all these so-called intelligences will enable that.
Intelligence means if you have a strong networking system, then you can't control that from a central point.
So, you need something which is kind of a self-organized system, which is for people for us
with our way of thinking, we can't copy that, but machines can.
It is a challenge that we have to cooperate first to interact then to cooperate with these things.
Imagine you are in your environment then a drone comes to you, with something important for you
but you have your little child on your side and you have to communicate with the drone, there's a lot of interaction involved.
This I guess is something that Mercedes-Benz is used to design in their products.
To envision all that you have some sort of projects and some sort of design studies.
You see, that this box is communicating here with these blue lines with her.
Its opening for her it shows her, I am for you.
So, this is a kind of an interaction cooperation that is very important. These boxes can talk to you in way,
to show what they are intending with light or movement, because words are ambiguous,
you can say a word that means something different for different people.
But what you need is stuff we can build in this Mercedes-Benz vans,
stuff that helps you, that works as a tool for you to enable new ways of living and working.
I am excited to see this future and I'm thrilled to know that Mercedes-Benz Vans is working on visions of the future.
But what about today?
Is the future already happening?
I for myself, I see that the current trend of sharing is definitely there
so what do you think, where does that current trend come from?
We are social beings.
We have developed that for thousands of years to share stuff,
to do something together, without money, without anything and this is built in sort of.
And, today's society when we are now so more separated, the desire is then growing to keep in touch.
And then Facebook or something is not enough, you need true touch.
And what do you think, if we are talking about this community-based sharing,
where does it go, how is it going to look like in the future?
This vision is all we talked about you know maybe the fabrication labs:
Fab labs are where people can meet for a given time, to produce something..
Then you can meet, with these workshop part vans like this and you can make your workshop
and it doesn't have to be inside a crowded city you can have a look for a space that is suitable for that.
That's human centered because they have talent, energy, the will to do something,
and these are the new tools.
In the future it will be there will be mass production, sure, but it will be also more customized production,
more creative production, and for this you can have this community of producers, makers.
Well, I would say I've learnt a lot today,
thank you very much for taking me along on this ride to the future.
Thank you very much Alexander!
And I'm going to check out those projects.
Thank you!
The future seems so close.
Next, I'm going to get an insight into how those ideas are transformed into solutions at Mercedes-Benz Vans.
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