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Jesper Kruijen, Head of Design, Co-Founder, Spiri The most obvious one of course being CO2, CO2 emission. 25% of all global carbon emission is actually from cars. That's scary. We have so many cars on the streets, there will be more in the future, we know this. So the next problem is of course congestion. I mean, it's just way too many cars on the streets. This cannot continue, we need to do something. When the cars then arrive in the city, we need to park them. And where do we park them? Also a huge issue and actually, and this is a crazy fact, 95% of our cars, they stand, well all our cars, they stand still 95% of the time. 95% of the time. I used to work at BMW as a designer. And when we sat down and designed, we had this mantra saying, we need to make beautiful cars, good looking cars and obviously functional cars. Also when standing still. No wonder, 95%. Imagine that. Then we have the other problem which is of course waste. We will continue to have more and more cars, we can build more and more lanes, but that doesn't solve anything, not even the problems I've just talked about. Also, car ownership, huge issue. It costs way too much to both buy a car but also to actually maintain it. So, yeah, it speaks for itself. Two trillion Americans a year, Americans spend on car ownership, buying and maintaining it. More than they spend on food. Unbelievable. Another waste is this 1.45 persons in each vehicle. That's an average. And I dare you that when you go into traffic in Copenhagen for instance, which I do every day, I'm pretty sure that this number is lower. We need to have more passengers. Okay, and then, yes. Public transportation. It's just not good enough. Because if it was, I wouldn't be taking my car from north of Zealand to Copenhagen every day. But I don't. And the reason why I don't do that is because it's not good enough. And actually I have a funny story. I went to the opera last week because we were to present our concept. And I tell you, it was crazy. There was huge queues. So I had this great idea. Let's go and take the train. I went to the train, packed, and it went at best 10 kilometers an hour. I was so stressed. So at Oesterpoort I actually left the train and walked all the way to the opera. That's a very long trip. And I was one and a half hours late. So the rehearsal was just skipped altogether. And there was nothing to do. So, not good enough. Then we have some alternatives out there. But they still don't solve the larger pains. If you look at this, we have two driving factors within transportation. One being price. The other one is convenience. If we look at public transportation, very cheap. But obviously convenience factor, as we call it, is very low. You have to stand at the train station and stand and wait and wait for the train to arrive. And so on. Then we have autonomous vehicles up there in the corner. That's the future. That's the best we can achieve, basically. And that's because it's very cheap to run. Because there is no professional driver. That's one thing. The other one is that it's very convenient because it is pretty much door-to-door delivery, as we call it. And Uber and taxis in general, they are also very high on convenience, door-to-door delivery. On the other hand, they are fairly expensive. So what's the future? The end game. Well, there's no doubt that autonomous driving within transportation is the future. And we just don't know when. But it's going to happen. So what are the advantages? Well, we have no parked cars in the city. As soon as you drop off a passenger, it goes and picks up another one. Or it goes outside the city and parks. Or it goes and charges. And that leaves you with the next one. No range anxiety. It will know when to charge. Extremely low cost in terms of transport. No professional driver means very low rides. For you guys and me. And then we have this, it's safer to drive as well. Because computers don't have feelings. And they don't get angry in traffic and so on. And they can almost predict the future. So it's a safer trip as well. Recent OECD studies and research show that if everyone in all big European cities, if everyone takes some kind of autonomous transportation service, then there will be 90% less cars in the city. Imagine that. I mean, it's just the whole infrastructure of bigger cities will just change dramatically. Okay. Our solution. Well, our solution is a hybrid one, actually. And it combines car sharing and transportation. And carpooling. But on demand. So you can get it when you need it. You can bring it, basically. And the reason why we can make it so cheap is because we take out the professional driver. Like with the autonomous vehicle, that is cheap to run. This is cheap to run as well. Because we take out the professional driver. The first customer is actually the driver. And then we use technology to match people up going in the same way. And we call it people driving people. Which I think is a nice little sentence. I mean, bringing in some kind of social thing about this transporting yourself from A to B. Okay. As a driver, you drive for free. You're rewarded pretty much. Because you go the extra mile and actually go and pick someone up. As a passenger, you pay public transportation rates. That means the price of a bus ticket. And the system is based on both the driver and the passenger contributing equally to make transportation convenient and affordable. So everyone is actually... It is a social thing, this. It can only happen if we have a driver and a passenger. That's how the service works. That was one step too quickly. Okay. Anyway, we made a prototype. And that prototype, I would like to just show you a little movie showing it in action. And that was also explaining what it is that the service does. Making this prototype is the reason why... Also the reason why we can make it so cheap. Because it's purpose-built for this purpose only. I will talk to you about this later. But let's just watch the video. We believe that transport around the city should be better than what public transportation and taxis offer. With Spiri, just tap a button to carpool in an electric vehicle custom-built for urban transport. Drive the Spiri for free and share it with passengers who are going in the same direction. Or be a passenger at the price of a bus ticket. Spiri is about the people. It's a community that together makes moving around your city incredible. It's safe, convenient and incredibly low-cost. Get early access. Request an invite on spiri.io. So there you have it. That's the Spiri. And we built this vehicle from scratch. And... And it is a car built for ride-sharing. It's not a vehicle that you own. It's something that we share together. It's something that we believe will be the future of transportation. And because of that, the whole aesthetics of the vehicle, the exterior design, which is pretty much what I'm doing, it is what I'm doing, should represent as well. And here you have it. This is the prototype. And when you think of it, really what you should be doing when you create, we want to create a small vehicle with a lot of room and a very simple vehicle. So what we really should be doing is making a square. That's the roomiest shape you can get, basically. But we used the prototype to have a bit of fun in the design department and actually gave it some, well, let's call it, sleekness. The prototype is a lab on wheels. It gives us the opportunity to test out everything from drivetrain, battery, wheel layout, and design. And this is what I really love about the way we work at Spiri. The fact that we test out things. Well, I mean, it's not the first time that a car manufacturer or whatever has made a prototype to make sure that it's running and it doesn't break down. But the fact that we show it to you, and we show it in the opera, we show it to people, potential customers, we show it to people, well, carpooling, car sharing, taxi companies, and so on, and get feedback. That's new. And that's what I love about it because this is by far not the final product. This is work in progress. And that's what I really, really like because we have gotten so much input. And I think it's safe to say that this vehicle will not look like this. And in the future. You might notice that it's covered up. And there's a reason for that because there is this kind of philosophy, design philosophy, behind it. And I believe that it will change a lot. But I do think that what we are trying to design, and you're all designers so you know this, we are trying to design for everyone. That's the worst brief a designer can get. Design for everyone. I mean, crazy. But, nevertheless, that's exactly what we're doing. And my thesis about this is that if you want to design for everyone, and you come out with a very, well, radical car sharing, but also a radical vehicle, then you really need to make it simple, the design. Because everything else is radical. And also I strongly believe that if you make very nice, clean, surfaces, people can easily, easier understand it. If you start to make complicated shapes and stuff, then you go in one direction. And some people will like it, some will hate it. I'm trying to make it clean in order to make this something that you remember and you understand. And if people remember it, perhaps they will remember it as the future of, an icon of the future of future transformation. That's at least the goal you need to aim high, right? Okay. So, we test, obviously we test the battery, and we need to do a lot of testing on that, and range, and so forth. But what we're also very proud of is this purpose-built vehicle that we're doing. All of the cars, they have 3,000 components. We have 700. And the thing is, it's purpose-built. That means that we are not going, I mean, a car is built for so many different purposes. Amongst others, going 200 kilometers in that direction, or whatever. That means our vehicle is built for a 15 to 20 minutes ride, then you get out. That's it. So, no comfy seats, not a big air conditioning, no electric windows, and so on. It's the purpose-built. The whole idea behind it is like the design philosophy. Keep it simple. Then there's another thing. We are actually, I'm in charge of the ergonomics as well. And this is something that we've done a lot of testing. Because the seat, well, you remember this guy, the driver, right? He only has, he's getting his detour. If he is to go, he's going to go. If he is going from A to B, that takes 10 minutes. It should only take 10% extra for him to pick up a passenger. So that means that the sequence of stepping in and out of the vehicle is crucial for our service to work smoothly. So we've done a lot of research on how other cars are doing this, these rear entrance to the back seats. And to be honest, they're horrible. This is the typical vehicle to be taxiing in Copenhagen. It's just not, I mean, I'm just going to do a bit of a, I don't know, method acting or whatever. You open the door and then you realize the door is just very, very small. That's the first thing. The next thing is that there's not enough room to get in because the rear wheel is in the way. So it's actually blocking the door apertures. Then you have to step over this step. Get in and once you get down, you're going, you're sitting really, really low. It's just not, I mean, but we have the opportunity to do something new. So that's what we've done. So first of all, we made the door apertures, the door openings bigger, higher, wider. We've moved the rear wheel backwards so there's much more room to get in. We don't have a step. We made it flat. And also, you sit higher. So even for older people, it's easy to get in and out. It's just important we're trying to design for everyone. And we know this. It actually makes the whole sequence of getting in and out much quicker. And the last thing is we don't have a luggage compartment because we have more leg room than a Mercedes S-Class limousine. And we know this because we've actually measured it. And that means that you can take your bag along with you in the vehicle. Get quickly in, quickly out. That's the whole idea. Then, of course, we use ultra-lightweight composites to build the actual vehicle as this thing of we want to keep it light but we also want to have it safe. That it's a safe vehicle. These two things don't get along very well. But with new high-tech technology, we can actually get low weight and very strong and safe vehicle. So it's extremely important to us that you are safe, of course. Then I'm going to let you in on a little secret actually because a lot of people ask me, okay, what about this three-wheeled layout? And actually, it's not three-wheeled. It is four-wheeled. These two front wheels just sit very close together. But the idea is actually a legal one because we thought that we would have advantages in different countries. In some countries, we'd have an advantage. It being three-wheeled. And in some countries, we'd have an advantage. It being four-wheeled. So legally, as long as these two wheels sit 420 mil together, it's a three-wheeler. If you put a space on it and it's 461, it's considered a four-wheeler. And to be honest, I mean, this is not the final wheel layout. It's not going to happen. But, I mean, it just comes to show the way it is. The way we work. That we try and we push and we push, push, push in order to get the best product out there. We know this is not the final one. We know that we will learn so much on the way. And that's why we're constantly pushing. Okay. I think it's not working. It's loading. That's something from the 80s. It's loading. Okay. So I think we just continue without it. But anyway, the idea is that we don't own cars in the future. We know this. It might not be me or you. But perhaps when your kids grow up, they will not own a vehicle. A car, at least. They will use a service like this. And we will launch sometime in 2017. And you can go to spirit.io. And sign up. So if your city is chosen, then you actually get to try out our service in 2017. I'm just going to tell you that it is connected. The vehicle. And it being connected to the cloud means that it's actually for you and our safety. Because we always know where the vehicle is. We know who's in it. We know if it's taking a detour. We can ask the driver to go back en route. And we can actually shut down the vehicle if we want that as well. So it's kind of this safety thing. And also we know if it's running out of electricity and so on. So that was a bit the other way around. And it's still not working. But anyway, go in on spirit.io and sign up. And let's change the future, right?
