Self-Driving Motorcycles? No Thanks, Says Piaggio Designer

The Piaggio Group'due south Advanced Blueprint Center, role of the 130-twelvemonth-old Italian motor vehicle company, is located in an airy top floor studio overlooking Pasadena Erstwhile Town in California. In that location are exposed brick walls and chic Italian effects, but oddly plenty, no showroom total of Vespa scooters or Moto Guzzi motorbikes. But there is an Italian restaurant then designers don't have to get far for a decent cappuccino and a service elevator to sneak out concept vehicles and do stealth test runs in the alley backside.

Heading upwardly the eye is designer Miguel Galluzzi, celebrated for creating the Ducati Monster, Aprilia RSV4, Cagiva Raptor, and re-imagined Moto Guzzi California 1400. The Argentina native was educated at California's ArtCenter College of Design, traveled extensively in Asia, and based in Italy for many years before returning to L.A. in 2022 to set the Piaggio Avant-garde Design Center.

PCMag went to Pasadena to learn why Galluzzi believes 2 wheels are better than 1, how Northern Vietnam's usage of scooters made him think differently about the future, and why he doesn't believe motorbikes will become autonomous anytime before long. Here are edited and condensed excerpts from our chat.

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So Miguel, do y'all believe two wheels are meliorate than four?
[Laughs] Yeah, I do. For many things, they are.

In many cities effectually the world two wheels are the just style to weave through insane traffic.
Exactly. Listen, I've been involved in the world of two-wheeled vehicles—motorcycles, mostly—since 1967, when I was 8 years old, caught upward in the passion for riding and racing. In that location are many advantages for ii-wheeled vehicles, and Piaggio has been in this business for a very long time, since WWII, helping people, via, mobility to get back to work.

You also came up with a digital extension of the 'three wheels' theme.
Yes, I did the Piaggio iMove (below) some time agone, thinking nigh Piaggio's APE and how that kind of 3-wheeled vehicle inverse—and nonetheless does in India—people's mobility at one point in history. iMove was intended to be a fully solar-powered vehicle that charges the batteries through its own painted panels. These are some of the futurity technology developments I've worked on that simply demand time to come to reality.

Why did yous make up one's mind to set up the Advanced Design Center in Pasadena?
The executives at Piaggio in Italian republic were surprised when I suggested Pasadena. For them, California means Baywatch—the beach, y'all know?. I said, the world is changing faster than we can empathise and we need to exist in a place where the future happens start, where virtually 160 disparate cultures cross paths with each other. On the way to the office I come across people from so many cultures, hear many, many languages. We see changes happen here. For example, after the 2008 financial crisis, y'all suddenly saw immature Californians quitting cars and riding bicycles—unheard of before that—it's a new movement, happening here before the residuum of the Us.

The younger generation just aren't that into car ownership.
As a mobility visitor we need to push forward in another direction—and that's not a auto. Nosotros are working in many directions right now, it could be the next generation of Moto Guzzi, or a Vespa, or something entirely new. Nosotros are definitely not living in the earth I grew up in.

I'm at the tail terminate of the Baby Boomers. After the war everything felt possible. But now, it's dissimilar. My father was part of the generation where he would open the window of the automobile and throw the cigarette outside. I lived between Deutschland and Italy, every bit an adult, and we would keep the stuff in the car and recycle when we got home. But my sons are from the generation where recycling is but part of their life. The more ideas nosotros accept, the improve. I am really focused on understanding what 14 year olds today will want to drive in the future. They don't care well-nigh horsepower, or vehicle ownership, they are different, they care about the environment, alternative energy, a different world.

Are there specific products Piaggio has developed for this generation?
Yes, for example, Piaggio developed the Wi-Bike (below), an ecologically friendly wheel with electric motor, manual and battery, three help modes so yous can get help going uphill if y'all want or button yourself through personal training app connectivity. It besides has satellite anti-theft functionality. And, in 2022, nosotros released the showtime electric Vespa—the Vespa Elettrica—a milestone for the brand.

Vespas are big in Asia.
I've been going to North Vietnam, to Hanoi, for work since 2007, when Piaggio started developing the whole line of Vespa scooters for the international market. The middle course in Asia is growing fast—the concluding enquiry I saw said 250 1000000 soon—just this is not the US definition of middle class. This is having the power to go to school, have somewhere to live, enough to eat, many things we accept for granted. But what's interesting is, even if they gain the monetary ability to own a machine, they have a dissimilar arroyo to life, they stick with ii wheels, considering of the congestion on the streets.

Office of your remit here is to work with the next generation of designers. Can you lot talk about that?
That's another reason why nosotros're in 50.A.—the proximity to the blueprint schools. We commissioned a sponsored written report with ArtCenter a few years ago to imagine the future of mobility in 2022. I graduated from there in 1986, and it was ane of the best experiences in my life. The school didn't teach me anything specifically only it gave me an attitude—how to be a problem-solver, focus on aesthetics. The deviation is the arroyo, the style you work; designers are sponges. Coming to ArtCenter, to California, was the first time, every bit someone from Due south America—a place of "limits"—where I of a sudden had no limits; the only limit is what's in your head. Information technology's an amazing environs, and I wanted to bring that influence, through collaborating with students, into the work nosotros do here.

What tools do you use in your work apart from good quondam-fashioned pencil on paper sketching, and clay models?
You still demand to know how to exercise that—and employ a file [mimes sculpting a piece of wood]. But, in terms of the computer, we accept software tools such as Cinema 4D—it was not supposed to be used in the style nosotros're using information technology, but it works—and Rhinoceros for 3D modeling; the industrial design tool Alias; ZBrush for sculpting and painting and CAD software Fusion 360. We take 3D printers here to produce scale models and parts, giving u.s.a. the possibility to create something, build information technology, look at it, so send the files overnight to Italy where they prototype the adjacent solar day, while we're sleeping here in California, then ship pieces back to u.s.. It's a democratic way of working.

Do you see a time to come for automation in motorcycles—sentient machines?
[Shakes head vigorously] No, no, no. Let me explain: but similar our brains where we have 2 unlike parts—the rational and the inspirational—motorcycles are romantic, it's a passion. Kids who are ownership motorcycles today, specially vintage bikes, are doing it to go closer to something nosotros've lost. Only similar the resurgence in vinyl; a romanticism for the analog.

Plus they can see tons of videos on YouTube to acquire how to strip down the engine and maintain the bike.
[Laughs] Yes, aye. When I was growing up in Buenos Aires, I'd take the autobus 45 minutes to buy a Usa motorcycle wheel magazine—and they were ever three to half dozen months late. But this was the only style I could feed my passion for motorcycles. Today immature people are connected to everyone and everything at the touch on of a button; information technology's amazing.

So what is your vision of the hereafter of mobility?
We are just at the beginning of an culling energy fourth dimension for two-bicycle vehicles, aught is left behind. In my house, here in California, I have solar panels, and my electricity meter whirrs backwards all day. My vision for the future is when I tin can store that power and use it to run calorie-free, compact, two-wheel vehicles. Ride to piece of work, if I need to, so plug information technology in and go home easily. This will make us contained of fuels that nosotros take relied on for and so many years.

Most importantly, these two-wheeled vehicles will exist terribly chic, assolutamente, being Italian-style.
Naturally. [Laughs]

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/18884/self-driving-motorcycles-no-thanks-says-piaggio-designer

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