Peppino Fazio, Assistant Professor at DIMES Department of University of Calabria, will be General Chair at ECARS 2015, the International Conference on E-mobility and Emerging Vehicular Technology, which will take place on October 13 in Bratislava, co-located with Smart City 360 Summit. Prof. Fazio talked to us about sustainable transportation, Electric-Vehicles, EU energy policy and the importance of the Summit for the research community.
ECARS 2015, the International Conference on E-mobility and Emerging Vehicular Technology, will take place in Bratislava on October 13, 2015. What can we expect from this important event?
First of all, thanks to the coordination team for the excellent work for the organization of the event. I am very glad to have the possibility to express my opinion about this conference. I think that this event will be of key importance for the whole scientific world, due to the topics it covers. It represents a way to gather all the people who are merely interested in the field of e-mobility. Since the Electric-Vehicles (EV) began to represent a promising pathway to reduce harmful emissions, all the community has been making massive research and studies on the main topics related to EV networking. I expect that, during ECARS 2015, all the recent progresses from industrial and academic sectors will emerge, giving the possibility to all the attendees to understand the line adopted by the scientific research. In addition, the conference will give the opportunity to think about new solutions and optimizations about EVs, as the result of the illustration and integration of all the recent contributions.
Sustainable transportation is one of the main goals within the EU energy policy. In your opinion, what results have been pursued so far and what are the obstacles to face in the next future?
Effectively, the scientific community is massively acting to follow all (or the most of) the main goals, in order to reach the conditions of a sustainable transportation. In my opinion, after reading and hearing about the new progresses related to alternative fuels and energy sources in view of the climate situation, I think that all the members of the EU are doing their best to cooperate. For example, one of the results, pursued until nowadays, is the proposal of organizing and setting-up a group of experts on alternative fuels, which was discussed last April in Brussels. The objective is the huge reduction of harmful emissions (they talked about a potential reduction of about 60% compared to the levels of the early Nineties, until 2050). I think that this kind of events witness the will of introducing new legislation and policies in the field of alternative energy sources for mobile vehicles, promoting new projects within the new energy-efficient and not-toxic transport sector. Regarding the obstacles, I believe that there are no big limitations in the scientific and research world of sustainable transportation: ECARS and related conferences demonstrate how all the members of the community are really active, proposing and promoting new solutions, algorithms and protocols “every-day”. Finally, I think it is necessary to sensitize the major manufacturers of “classical-fuels”, in the light of the possible impact on the economic system.
What is your idea of the role that Smart City Summit should play in order to address research and industry efforts in the field?
Thanks for the question, which gives me the opportunity to say that, in my opinion, the Smart City 360 Summit is already playing a very important role in the EVs field. These events, which gather people from academic and industrial sectors from all over the world, represent a key instrument of collecting and exchanging new ideas about the hot topics, especially considering the critical conditions of the climatic situation. All the potential collaborations born during the Summit, should be able to grow better also after the main meeting. I imagine that a periodical updating of all the involved entities will lead to a fruitful expansion of the new proposals.
