The France Macau Chamber of Commerce (FMCC) held its monthly breakfast meeting “Stressed Out from Commuting? The Future is Here with Engaging Designs & Smart Transportation Systems” at Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16 yesterday, where the meeting’s speaker Filipe Bragança, AxiusDesign Group founder and global design director, spoke about his company’s research on mobility and the definition of the future’s ideal vehicle.
After the event, The Macau Post Daily asked Bragança about the application and benefits of smart vehicles in Macau, to which he commented that it could be “very positive”, but pointed out that aside from smart vehicles, the city’s infrastructure must be smart in terms of being designed to match the purpose of daily commuting and be in accordance with what the people need to realise its benefits.
Bragança also underlined the example of charging stations for electric vehicles in Macau, which he noted can take up parking spaces given that the city is already “very narrow and very compact”, and he brought up observations showing the difficulties in parking given Macau’s narrow streets. “This is not smart and does not bring any value”, he noted.
Despite the limitations, Bragança told The Macau Post Daily that it was “definitely” important to keep supporting and working on the development of a smart city and smart vehicles, saying: “If we all keep working together towards the same aim, those people or those institutions that have the power to make decisions or to create them, they will in the end move ahead because we need to give them the example”.
Although “wonderful examples” outside of Macau are observed, there are still “completely obsolete examples” in the city, Bragança said. He noted that in this case, it is not about the money, but “the sense of thinking what is right and what has a future to evolve”. Mentioning Macau’s charging stations as an example, he said that “the best thing is to take them away” as they take up a lot of space “visually and trafficwise”, giving an example in Shanghai where a charging machine placed on a wall, similar to a parking meter, that does not take space.
The founder and global design director of AxiusDesign Group, Filipe Bragança, gives a talk during yesterday’s France Macau Chamber of Commerce’s (FMCC) monthly breakfast meeting at Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16. Photo: Rui Pastorin
