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Everything that’s new faces difficulties. Any innovation will run into obstacles...
Due to vested interests. Innovations are disruptive.
If you’re on the side of change, you have to fight.
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
You have to stick at it, no matter how long it takes: Never give up.
My name is Wubbo Ockels, best known as the first Dutch astronaut.
I’m a professor at the Technical University of Delft.
I’m standing next to the Superbus. This is a new type of public transport...
which I initiated because the current transport options seemed insufficient.
I thought, what would be the ideal form of public transport?
It needs to be fast, sustainable, good-looking, sexy and powerful.
All the things that you would expect from a normal car.
This is how it operates: You enter your request in the system.
It’s on demand, it doesn’t have a fixed service.
For instance, you want to go from Katwijk to Zwolle tomorrow at 8 o’clock.
You then get offers from several vehicles.
One will be available to leave at 8.30, another at 7.45.
Then you get a group of people going roughly to the same place at the same time.
With 20 passengers you can do this.
This vehicle can use all the normal roads, just like a bus.
It can go on roundabouts or to small villages.
It picks everyone up.
And then it drives to the motorway.
There, the bus takes the Superbus lane in the middle of the motorway.
The maximum speed on this lane is 250 km/h.
When the bus reaches a drop off point, it switches to the normal road.
It can also go on secondary roads when delivering passengers.
It’s like an intermediary mode...
between a normal car and familiar means of public transport like the train.
Driving this vehicle is a combination...
of flying a jet fighter...
and driving a sports car or a train due to its smoothness.
It is easy to drive thanks to its small steering wheel and rear wheel drive.
You don’t feel like you’re in such a long vehicle. It feels almost like a normal car.
The bus is divided into compartments for six people.
It looks luxurious. Many people ask whether it’s very expensive.
The answer is: A road transport vehicle is cheaper than a train.
The operational costs of this bus are similar to those of a train.
The original idea for the Superbus came to me in the beginning of 2004.
This is when I became a professor at the University of Delft.
The Superbus became one of the first things on which I worked.
I started working together with one of my former students, Joris Melkert.
He is very knowledgeable about aerospace technology.
And I got Antonia Terzi, a great designer of fast vehicles.
We put together a team of professors from many different disciplines.
This team of experts laid out the concept...
defining the crucial and less important points.
We worked out the best way to realise the project.
This was the starting point. We received financial support from the government.
We got more industries involved. Our approach became more professional.
There were still many students involved.
The project has matured within TU Delft.
This is now a real product ready for the market.
The next stage is to drive more and faster.
We want to drive in Germany and in France.
We want to show it to the people. In the end, the customers are people...
who will use this as public transport.
We are proud that the Superbus is accepted as a normal vehicle.
The Dutch environment minister gave us this licence plate.
Having a licence plate means you can drive on the public roads.
It allows the bearer to use the Dutch road system.
The low aerodynamic drag means you can save energy.
The vehicle is also lightweight, which reduces resistance and saves energy.
But it’s not all just about savings.
Sustainability means protecting the future.
Making sure that something will be just as good in the future as it is now.
Oil-based fuels are running out. So we need an electric engine.
And you use solar energy.
But there is more to it. Something very fundamental...
is that sustainability shouldn’t mean less, it should mean different, more fun.
You want the future to be attractive.
You want a better future for your children than what we have today.
This bus looks luxurious, yes.
That’s ok. We don’t need to reduce it.
This is a vehicle that meets the sustainability objective.
It’s something you would like your children and grandchildren to drive in.
Public transport with the Superbus raises the bar.
The logo consists of an S, and a B in the shape of a heart.
It is both practical and emotional. You feel that this is a good thing.
We have a development programme in mind.
You can’t just deploy a new transport system from one day to the next.
In addition to the idea, the concept and the studies...
you need the government to build the special roads.
This is a hurdle; things are taking twice as long as I’d like them to.
But this is the price of setting up something completely new and innovative.
My vision is to have this thing on the road within five years.