Clara Moreno
Last July I started an internship in the industry and with it I also started a self-reflection on the concept of sustainability from a new perspective. In a few words, my task was to provide a concept of a small electricity generator to be used as a portable charger in electric vehicles. At least that is what I understood when I first read the title of my assignment and it seemed as a cool technical challenge! I have to confess that the title also included something about being commercially feasible… and my supervisor insisted: it has to be competitive in the market; the market demands will set your design requirements and you have to carry out a thorough market study to determine them. All right! - I thought. Nice complement to my technical research, but should not take me more than two weeks.
One month and a half later I was putting over the table for discussion an A3 paper full of boxes interconnected by uncertain causality relationships, roughly classified as economic or political actors, stakeholders or barriers. Without even knowing it by that time, I was struggling with a socio-economic framework. In particular, I had encountered the characteristic framework of niche markets (i.e. electrical vehicles) full of uncertain barriers to substitute incumbent technologies (i.e. conventional cars with combustion engines)… Indeed, it was difficult to escape from this framework that was affecting my technical design decisions, one year would be needed to analyse it thoroughly!
What is more: it had a big component of uncertainty but time had arrived to take design decisions based on this blurry framework. If the aim of e-mobility is to reduce emissions and oil dependence, there is a big opportunity to innovate (e.g. alternative fuels or less polluting combustion techniques). In the electrical vehicles market, if my design is ‘sustainable’ and it is ‘innovative’ it will be commercially competitive. Then I had the opportunity to create a environmentally sustainable and innovative design, according to the general demands and drivers of the electrical vehicles’ market.
This starting point has led me to several deliberations, contradictions and discussions: about the definition of sustainability for an engine, about the (un-)sustainability of batteries and electricity, about the necessity to harm one sustainability design criteria to enable another one as a designer, about environmental sustainability as a late-comer in the iterative design process and about sustainability in the automotive industry as well as the impact of legislation on car manufacturers. From all the reflections, I want to share one conclusion related to the picture of the balance on top: sustainable designs are expensive and not practical. Especially in the electric vehicles market, low cost drives customers’ acceptance. Then, investing efforts in a less-polluting generator does not provide economical profit in return, increases the total factory cost and can produce more socio-technical barriers (e.g. lack of infrastructure for alternative fuels). The outcome is customers with a higher reluctance towards electric vehicles and the proliferation of conventional (non-sustainable) powertrains. At this point I understood why sustainability is often defined as a juncture of four separate dimensions.
Then, what is sustainable development in the described automotive company scenario? To come up with a practical design that can be sustained in time: future emissions legislation proof and efficient use of resources, allowing an appropriate business strategy and economic growth which accelerates the adoption of electric vehicles. What is the role of the designer? To assign weight to each side of the balance and -probably- tip the balance favouring one side, according to his or her own technical-economic criteria (or values?) and accepting the associated risks of the decision. Is environmental sustainability and innovation a must for the engine design process? The concept is already innovative in itself, and using proven technology is crucial for social acceptance.
So…was my final concept sustainable? I hope to have a better answer to it after this course!