Megacities (Future by Semcon Magazine #3/2012)

B SVERIGE PORTO BETALT PORT PAYÉ
FUTURE
SEMCON AB
417 80 GÖTEBORG
A MAGAZINE ABOUT
ENGINEERING SERVICES &
PRODUCT INFORMATION #3.2012
futurebysemcon#3.2012
AFTER
WORK
name Oliver Krebs
age 26 years
at work Engineer,machine
technology,Semcon Stuttgart.
after work Firefighter.Part of
Germany’s 1.1 million-strong volunteer
fire service,FF.
other Hurdler.Highest honours are
a silver and a bronze in the 400m
hurdles at the German championships.
OLIVER KREBS:
“Acalloutisalways
ajourneyintothe
unknown”
About me
“I am positive, energetic, helpful and enjoy
action. At work I develop truck engines and
my spare time consists of training and fire
drills. I am 26 years old, have a girlfriend and
live in Zazenhausen outside Stuttgart.”
About my job
“I’manengineerinMechanicalEngineering
andhaveworkedatSemconinStuttgartsince
February2011.Iworkonthedevelopmentoftruck
enginesasaconsultantforDaimlerAG,mainly
specializinginthemechanicsoftheinjection
system.”
About the fire service
“Alotofmyfamilyisactiveinthefireservice-it
fascinatedmeasachild,althoughmainlythebig
firetrucksbackthen.WhenIwas10Istartedin
theyouthassociationwithexercises,trainingand
meetings.WhenIwas18,Ididmybasictraining
andhavesincebeenintheactivetaskforce,now
asengineerandgroupleader.Wehavearound40
to50call-outsperyear,andtrainingandexercises
atleasteveryotherweek.
Call-outs can range from small fires to car
accidents - usually it’s a garbage can on fire.It’s
impossible to know beforehand - a callout is
always a journey into the unknown.”
What the fire service has taught me
“Through both sport and the fire service,I have
learned to be focused and disciplined,without
losing sight of the objective.When the pager
bleeps,you never know what to expect:
it’s suspense,action and variety in its purest
form.When you’re called out everything has
to happen quickly and correctly.I also enjoy
dealing with technology and working with dif-
ferent types of people at work.”
ABOUT: VOLUNTARY FIRE SERVICES
In countries such as Germany, Aus-
tria and Italy, the fire service is largely
based around volunteers, rather than
a professional corps. In Germany, only
cities with over 100,000 inhabitants
are required to have a professional fire
department.
+
MEGA
TRENDSTheworld’scitiesaresuper-sizing.
Arewereadyforthechallenges?
TEXT:HILDAHULTÉNPHOTO:FRANKLINDERS
MIKEBIDDLEKNOWS
HOWTORECYCLEPLASTIC
QOROSCREATESANEW
CARBRANDINSHANGHAI
ATLASCOPCO:DRILLING
SMARTER,SAFERANDFASTER

2 FUTURE BY SEMCON 3.2012 FUTURE BY SEMCON 3.2012 3
16ACONCEPTCAR
FORMEGA-CITIES
Semconwantedtoshowthat theurban
carsofthefuturerequirenewthinking
andinnovation.Sotheyproducedtheir
ownconceptcar,UrbanMovE.
40MEETSEMCON’S
SHARPESTMINDS
InSemconBrainsyouwillmeetBertil
Nelson,whoautomatesthetestingofVolvo
engines,JeanetteCarlsson,themachine
designerwhohascreatedanewtypeof
ventilationandRobertHinesley,witha
passionfordigitaltechnicalinformation.
51SMARTSTEEL
Ovakohasdevelopedanewsteelwith
muchbetterdurability.But theyneeded
helptofindnewbusinessopportunities
fortheirproduct.Sotheyturnedto
Semcon.
CONTENTS #3.2012ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE OF FUTURE BY SEMCON
Website: semcon.com Letters: Future by Semcon, Semcon AB, 417 80 Göteborg, Sweden. Change of address: future@semcon.com
Publisher: Anders Atterling. Tel: +46 (0)70-447 28 19, e-mail: anders.atterling@semcon.com Semcon project manager:
Madeleine Andersson. Tel: +46 (0)76-569 83 31, e-mail: madeleine.andersson@semcon.com Editorial production: Spoon. Editor:
Katarina Misic. Designer:Mathias Lövström.Website: spoon.se Repro: Spoon. Printing:TrydellsTryckeri,Laholm.ISSN: 1650-9072.
Translation: Cannon Språkkonsult.
EDITORIAL
A mind-boggling (mega) future
O
ver the next 20 years, the world will
grow by the equivalent of seven cities
of ten million people each year. The
mind boggles. And the challenges seem as
endless as the city limits in these mega-cities.
But it is these cities that offer people the op-
portunity for a better life; mega-cities are the
economic engines for their nations. It is here
the future is created.
Technological development and innova-
tion will be the key to giving us more op-
tions, developing better tools to deal with the
challenges and generating new markets and
opportunities for economic growth and jobs.
My ambition is for Semcon to be a part of this
development, together with our customers.
In this edition of Future by Semcon you can
read about the challenges of mega-cities and
the opportunities they offer. You can also read
about Semcon’s own concept car for mega-
cities, Urban MovE, and a brand new car brand
from China, Qoros. We visit Mike Biddle in
California, who has revolutionized the way
we recycle plastic, and we go deep into the
mines with Atlas Copco, ensuring safe
and fast drilling. Also, you can look into
the future with Arcam’s 3D printers and
Ovako’s intelligent steel. 1
FUTUREBY
SEMCONON
YOURIPAD
Search for“Semcon”in
the App Store.
MARKUS GRANLUND,CEO,SEMCON
46THEFUTUREIN3D
Arcam’sadvanced3Dmachinescan
manufactureeverythingfromunique
aeroplanepartstopersonalizedimplants.
Butwhenanaviationcustomerdemanded
anewdevelopmentinashort timethey
neededhelpfromSemcon.
34NewthinkingfromQoros
Qorosisdaringtodowhatfewothershave:
startanentirelynewcarbrand.Withadomestic
marketinChina,theyarelookingtowards
Europe.AndSemconispartofthejourney.

PEOPLE #3.2012PEOPLE IN THIS ISSUE OF FUTURE BY SEMCON
Emerging mega-cities will change conditions
for many industries and companies. Meet some
of the people in Future by Semcon talking on
the subject of mega-cities.
perwoxenius,developmentmanager,
arcamab,göteborg,sweden
Inthefuture,moreandmorepeoplewillliveincities.Canyourproducts
helptosolvethetechnicalchallengesofmega-cities?
“Theappearanceoffutureaircraft willdependon thepopulationbase.
Mega-citieswillneedlargeraircraft tocarrymorepeoplewhilst still
keeping thenumberofflightsdown.If theplanechanges,theengines
change,and thisiswherewecomein.Our technologyalsohelpsplanes
flylongerwithout stopovers,andit’s the takeoffandlanding that use
themost fuel.”
patrikölund,researchmanager,ovakoab,hofors,sweden
Themega-citiesofthefuturewillbecomelargerandmorewidespread.Whatdemands
willthisdevelopmentmakeofyouassteelmanufacturers?
“Thelarger thecities,thegreater thefocuson theenvironment.Vehicleshave tobe
lighterandstronger,andit couldbeanadvantageforus that it willrequirematerialsof
higherquality tosaveweight.”
mikebiddle,founderandceoofmbapolymers,california,usa
Howdomega-citiesandgrowingurbanizationaffect ourabilitytorecyclewaste?
“Theconcentrationofpeopleandcompaniesactuallylowers thecost ofrecycling.I
always tellpeople:‘Thefirst mileis themost expensivepart ofanyrecyclingprogram.’In
futureapartment blocksIcanimaginerecyclingchutesdeliveringrecyclablewaste toa
largecisternin thebasement,whichcan thenbecollected.”
stefandahlberg,technicalmanageratatlascopcomre,örebro,sweden
Doesthedevelopment offuturemega-citiesinAfricaandAsiaaffect yourbusiness?
“Thereisaneedforbothsewersandwater,perhapsundergroundand therewewoulddefinitelybeable to
participate.Whenyoudrillincities therearenoiserequirements,andwehavequiet machines.Afewyearsago,
wesoldmachinesfordrainageexcavationinHongKong,forexample.”
jeanettecarlsson,
designer/product
developer,semcon
karlstad, sweden
Heating,coolingandventilation
requirealot ofenergy.Howmuchcan
thesefunctionsbemoreefficient in
themega-citiesofthefuture?
“Theadvantageof theamount of
energyconsumedandcreatedin
mega-citiesis that it providesgreater
opportunitiesforsynergies.Somuch
progressisbeingmadeandwe’recon-
stantlylearningmoreabout howwe
canbest takeadvantageof theenergy,
soit willprobablybecomemoreeffec-
tiveinaverygoodway.”
klarasibeck,productdeveloper,zound
industries,stockholm,sweden
Howdoyouthinkwewilllistentomusicinthemega-citiesofthe
future?
“Inlargecities,travellingandlivingisdifferent tosmallerplaces,
whichaffectshowyoulisten tomusic.Whenyou travelbysubway
andbus,insteadofinyourowncar,youuseheadphones,forexam-
ple.Also,inapartmentsyouhave tolimit thevolumesoasnot to
disturb theneighbours.In thefutureit will thereforebeimportant
todevelopsoundsystems that canshieldanddirect soundina
goodway.”
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FUTURE BY SEMCON 3.2012 7
In theforeseeable
future,ourmegacitieswill
not becalledLondon,NewYork
andTokyo,but Bogotá,Kinshasa
andShenzhen.Theemergenceofan
increasingnumberofmega-citieswill
define thedevelopment ofourworld
oneverylevel-politically,economically
and technologically.What are the
challengesinvolvingmegacities
andwhat will theymean?
TEXT STEFAN SJÖDIN

people every second. Moreover, just about
everywhere, we are living increasingly longer.
From a demographic point of view, 2008
was a year zero, when more people lived in
cities, rather than the countryside, for the
first time. Also, at the end of 2011 the number
of people on earth surpassed seven billion.
Furthermore - here’s the interesting thing
- virtually all population growth is occurring
in cities.
RIGHT NOW THREE million new people move to
cities each week, contributing to the follow-
ing startling development:
In 1975 there were three mega-cities in the
world: Mexico City, Tokyo and New York. At
the time of writing, there are 39 mega-cities,
28 of which are in emerging economies and
developing countries. Between 1975 and 2010,
the population of the world’s mega-cities in-
creased from 53.2 million to 318 million people.
This type of urban growth is unparalleled
in history. It took, for example, 130 years for
London to go from one million to nearly eight
million inhabitants. The same demographic
leap took 45 years for Bangkok, 37 years for
Dhaka and only 25 years for Seoul.
“Cities are the future! It is here the climate
battle can be won - or lost,”says Willfried
Wienholt, vice president of Urban Develop-
ment at Siemens.
He believes that entrepreneurs and innova-
tors around the world are needed to solve the
challenges caused by mega-cities. It is clear
that the public and private sectors have to
work together.
“Large cities have to review many important
areas to meet the challenges of the future. These
involve transportation, construction, energy,
waste and water, amongst many other things.
They then need to create a roadmap based on an
understanding of how different technological
solutions can interact with each other.”
Despite everything, the world’s mega-
regions cover a very small part of the earth’s
surface. However, the forty largest of them
are home to approximately 18% of the world’s
population and account for 66% of global
economic activity and 85% of technological
and scientific innovation.
“Cities are the fundamental building block
of prosperity for both nations and families,”
says Marc Weiss, chairman of the Prague In-
stitute for Global Urban Development.
It is not therefore surprising that many
companies and industries are spending a
lot of time analyzing and adapting to the
enormous potential that mega-cities have as
a market. Siemens, Ericsson, Bosch, BMW,
IBM, Audi and GM are just a few examples of
companies working on the issue, and they are
very aware of the importance mega-cities will
have on their future business.
Mega-cities are here to stay.
We look here at seven of the most impor-
tant challenges.
D
haka, Bangladesh. One of
the world’s most densely
populated areas. 13 million
people live here already, a
figure which will double -
within ten years.
Bangladesh is a kind
of epicentre for climate
change. Climate refugees are pouring in from
across the country, with stories of cyclones,
flooding and erosion. Here they go from being
peasant farmers to so-called urban poor. The
men become rickshaw drivers and the children
begin to work in factories. The problem is that
low-lying Dhaka has the same risk of ero-
sion that villagers around the country have
already experienced. Two major rivers from
the southern slopes of the Himalayas trans-
port vast amounts of brown water through the
cities, on their way to the Bay of Bengal to the
south.
“The river banks are soft and muddy and are
widening all the time. The increased hydrody-
namics of the river system contribute to glaciers
melting faster, which leads to even more water
and even larger floods,”says Atiq Rahman of the
Centre for Advanced Studies in Bangladesh.
Dhaka used to be surrounded by swamp-
land which helped suck water away from
flooding areas. But now the swamps are popu-
lated and the excess water has nowhere to go.
“Additionally, cyclones are increasing both
in frequency and intensity. We have had three
in just the last few years, whereas there were
previously 20-30 years between cyclones.”
So far, this seems a disaster scenario.
But what if we look at Dhaka in a differ-
ent light? Why is Dhaka also being mentioned
in articles about creativity, and innovators
coming from far and wide to study and be
inspired? The answer, of course, is that this
extreme situation produces new solutions,
especially in everyday life.
WHEN SALT WATER FROM floods has destroyed
paddy fields, farmers have switched to farm-
ing shellfish in salt water. When chickens
drown, people have acquired birds that can
swim, such as ducks. There are many, fre-
quently surprising, examples of adaptation.
“The innovations necessary in countries
such as India and China will not be developed
from Scandinavia,”says Tina Karlberg, City
Account Manager at Siemens in Sweden.
Her company works with megacities
around the world on a wide range of chal-
lenges: health care, waste, electricity and clean
water, for example.
“One of my conclusions is that you have
to be in place and understand the context in
order to contribute to megacities’solutions,”
she says.
The emerging mega-cities have several
similar challenges, but the challenges also
change depending on the stage of develop-
ment, geography and culture. While Dhaka
is forced to prioritize flood works, Beijing is
working on its enormous problems with pub-
lic transport and air quality, Lagos in Nigeria
is struggling to even provide basic health care
to people with HIV/AIDS and malaria, while
the health challenges in New York are all about
over-consumption diseases like obesity, dia-
betes and cardiovascular disease. Furthermore,
in the Philippine capital Manila only 11% of
the population live in houses connected to the
waste disposal network.
The simple definition of a mega-city is that
it has over ten million inhabitants.
But how do we understand the scale of
mega-cities?
Some do it from space. A relatively recent
picture of Istanbul from 500 kilometres al-
titude shows how Turkey’s largest city, with
its 15 million inhabitants, continues to swell
into a giant region around the Bosphorus.
This geographical growth of the largest cities
creates mega-regions - massive metropolitan
areas - around the world. Take for example
the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Guangzhou region
in China, with 120 million people. Or Japan’s
Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe region, which
is estimated to grow to 60 million people by
2015. Bangkok, in Thailand, is expected to ex-
pand a further 200 kilometres from its current
centre by 2020.
BETWEEN THE CITIES in the various metropoli-
tan areas run elongated urban corridors, such
as the 1500-km-long industrial corridor be-
tween Mumbai and Delhi in India.
Certain urban areas are larger, both in terms
of area and population, than countries such as
Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Neth-
erlands.
Every second, five people are born in the
world, while two die. This therefore means
that the total population is increasing by three
“Cities are the future! It
is here the climate battle
can be won – or lost.”
Willfried Wienholt, vice president of Urban Development, Siemens
FOCUS:
MEGA-CITIES
10million inhabitants
is the definition of
a mega-city.
2%of the earth’s surface
consists of cities.
53%of the world’s population
lives in cities.
2008For the first time, more people live
in cities than in the countryside.
33%of urban residents
live in slums.
75%of the world’s carbon emissions
are produced in cities.
Source:UNWorldUrbanizationProspects.
Dhaka in Bangladesh,with its 13 million inhabitants,is the world’s ninth largest city,but is expected to double in population over the next 10 years.

FOCUS:
MEGA-CITIES
7 MEGA-CHALLENGES
Sevenofthegreatestchallenges
facingtheworld’scities.
CHALLENGE 1:
Out of China’s 669 cities, 60% suffer from
a lack of water. And despite the fact that
a Chinese citizen consumes just a third
of what an American consumes, China’s
water supply has fallen by 13% and is con-
tinuing to decline. However, this problem
is not unique to China’s big cities. Virtu-
ally all the world’s mega-cities are facing
increasing water shortages. Mexico City,
for example, was built on an old lake bed
and is now falling slowly into the mire. An
over-extraction of groundwater means the
city is sinking even more and today, water
is pumped up from the surrounding plains
to alleviate water shortages - something
that is also leading to new conflicts be-
cause water is needed for agriculture.
In Los Angeles the lawns are green,
despite being in the middle of
a desert. Sprinklers are
on all day long, despite
the mayor’s officers
travelling around
the neighbour-
hood and talk-
ing about the
drought and the
looming water
shortage.
The biggest
water problems in
mega-cities are in-
adequate infrastructure
for water and sanitation,
pollution, saltwater intrusion
and flooding.
According to Arjun Thapan, chairman of
the World Economic Forum’s global
council for water safety, the ques-
tion is not sufficiently prior-
itized:
“The water and sanita-
tion issue is of the lowest
priority for many reasons,
but one of the main ones is
that water has no price. In
order to attract private sec-
tor investment and technical
know-how you need to value
water. These problems will not
be solved without running water
and sanitation as a business, with
better results and higher returns. I would
advocate public/private partnerships, with
governments having a regulatory role,”he
told the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.
In China environmental damage and pol-
lution costs 8-12% of GDP annually, writes
Svenska Dagbladet. 21% of water resources
are unfit for drinking and irrigation. The
government has therefore decided to invest
610 billion U.S. dollars in the next ten years
to clean up rivers and to address emissions.
Tokyo is another Asian city which has
made extensive investments to overcome
water-related problems. About two billion
dollars have been spent on the Metropoli-
tan Outer Floodway drainage system - a
huge underground tank which collects the
excess water which is then pumped into the
River Edo and then runs out into the sea. 1
Water
Los Angeles by night has been called the
world’s leading light show. A universe of
electricity created by humans. Ten mil-
lion people and six million cars consuming
energy. For decades it has been a symbol
of success, a lifestyle built on wide roads,
consumption and excess - and people all
over the world want to have as much fun.
But while Asian mega-cities like Mumbai
are now following in Los Angeles’footsteps
at a frightening pace, Los Angeles has in-
vested large sums of money in reducing and
improving energy consumption. California
currently uses 40% less energy than the
rest of the U.S. and is developing the world’s
biggest solar power plant. In the Mojave
Desert 24,000 reflectors shine sunlight
onto two towers, which in turn produce
steam and drive electricity turbines. It pro-
duces enough electricity for 4,000 house-
holds. Nearly 11% of California’s electricity
is renewable, but the goal is that by 2020
this will increase to one-third.
In a world where we have become ac-
customed to electricity always being on
hand, it is difficult to imagine a life in
darkness. We take heating in our houses
for granted. But while residents of Los
Angeles are being forced to learn to reduce
their consumption of water and electric-
ity, one in every five people in the world
has no access to electricity. They are forced
to rely on open fires, which have serious
health effects. According to WHO, around
1.5 million people each year are killed by
smoke injuries and poisoning. Electricity
production is thus a necessity, but the cur-
rent trend has to be reversed.
“In the next 25 years China’s urban
population will increase from 45% to 65%.
Every year there are 15-20 million new
urban residents. Two-thirds of China’s
energy is coal-based. The country is the
largest emitter of carbon dioxide, but if
you look at the per capita figures, the Unit-
ed States, for example, has emissions five
times higher,”the architect Ulf Ranhagen
stated during the Vinnova annual confer-
ence in 2010.
He was then in the middle of the pro-
cess of planning a new Chinese multi-
million city.
“At the same time, China has two-thirds
of the world’s solar panels and wind energy
investment. They do a lot to create sus-
tainable urban development.”
Tina Karlberg, City Account Manager at
Siemens, agrees:
“China is aware of the challenge and
you can see it in a lot of areas. A simple
example is that they have road lighting
with pinwheels, which provide the lights
with their own energy. By using LED this
doesn’t use much electricity.
“We will see extensive development in
this area in the coming years. Such as by
integrating solar cells into other materi-
als: building materials, surfaces, chimneys
and facades and developing other types of
energy receivers than the cells used today.
In combination with smart power grids ex-
cess energy can also be sold in the future.”
Companies like Ericsson, Electrolux and
Siemens are some of the worldwide com-
panies making major investments in smart
grids. The traditional model of electricity
generation is currently being turned on its
head. One reason is that electricity in the
future will be produced at a variety of dif-
ferent small places, such as solar and wind
power plants. Sometimes the electricity in
an electric car battery parked in the driveway,
for example, will be used. That means that
smarter grids will have to be able to receive
deliveries from a lot of small producers.
“Over the last decade our cities have
been wrapped in layers of digital data - tel-
ecommunications, sensor networks, smart
metering infrastructure - which now form
the basis for a large, intelligent nervous
system that can improve the efficiency of
cities in many ways,”says Carlo Ratti from
MIT Sense Able City Lab.
When the International Energy Agency
(IEA) presented the 2011 report“World En-
ergy Outlook”, Fatih Birol, chief economist
at the IEA, noted the following:
“To have a chance of achieving the two
degree target, any new energy infrastructure
installed after 2017 has to be carbon neutral.”
This is a challenge. And the solution to
this challenge could come from an unex-
pected quarter. Between 2005 and 2009,
China invested USD 34.6 billion in clean
energy, almost twice as much as the U.S.
“We may have taught the Chinese to
drive, eat, and buy its way to ruin, but Chi-
na may yet show us how to save the world,”
says Thomas J Campanella, author of the
book The Concrete Dragon. 1
Energy
CHALLENGE 2:
“We may have taught China to
drive, eat, and buy its way to
ruin, but China may yet show us
how to save the world.”
Thomas J Campanella, author of the book The Concrete Dragon
13.6per cent of the world
population is expected
to live in mega-
cities by 2050
Around 88% of all greenhouse gas emissions in Mexico City
can be put down to fossil fuels and electricity consumption.
In the mega-city of Bangkok,according to aWorld Bank report,local authorities had the resources to provide
the city with water up to and including 2011.After that,supply will exceed demand.

The global automotive industry’s two buz-
zwords in recent years have been mega-
cities and mobility. The Financial Times
recently referenced a study which estimat-
ed that the number of cars in the world in
2050 could reach three billion - more than
four times the present number.
“Over the last hundred years cars have
shaped cities rather than cities shaping
cars. In the future, we have to see the op-
posite: cities beginning to shape motoring,”
promised Chris Borroni-Bird, Director of
Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at
General Motors a while ago.
The last big auto show in Frankfurt
showed three clear themes for vehicles
of the future: they are radically cleaner,
they are connected (smarter vehicles that
communicate to each other) and they are
extremely customizable according to the
driver’s needs.
When Tina Karlberg, City Account
Manager at Siemens, is asked to give ad-
vice to today’s young entrepreneurs about
which urban challenges may be worth in-
vesting in, she replies:
Many mega-cities are huge markets for
the export of environmental technology.
Mexico City, which on its own produces
12 500 tons of waste per day, is no excep-
tion. As more and more people in mega-
cities become middle-class, and thereby
are able consume more, the need for waste
management and recycling increases, and
also new ways of looking at the life cycle of
products (cradle to grave).
“There is of course a commercial aspect
to this, but my current interest is in how
environmental technology can help solve
the problem and why it is not used where
it is really needed,”says Santiago Me-
jía Dugand, a PhD student in Industrial
environmental technology at Linköping
University in Sweden.
Part of his research compares the two
mega-cities of Mexico City and Cairo.
“The cities have many similarities:
they have around 20 million inhabitants,
and large traffic and waste problems. The
countries are oil economies and have a
similar climate,”he says.
Climate is important in these stud-
ies because the Swedish model - burning
waste and using the heat - falls down. Ad-
ditional heat is simply not needed.
“We need other techniques to deal with
waste. In oil-producing nations bio-fuels
are not as viable.”
Moreover, there are major problems with
using over-full landfill sites as a resource.
“In Mexico City, many people depend on
refuse tips for their livelihood. There are
large groups of informal recyclers and re-
moving this possibility creates large social
problems,”he says.
However, the growing mountains of
waste can also create new business op-
portunities. The analyst firm Pike Research
reports that municipal solid waste (MSW)
in China will reach 472 million tonnes an-
nually by 2022, representing 17% of the
global total. This creates great opportu-
nities for technologies that can convert
waste into electricity and heat.
“The growth of megacities in China and
around the world presents a major oppor-
tunity for the bio-energy industry, which
is in search of cheap raw materials. MSW
is a largely underutilized resource and a
low-hanging fruit for industry,”writes
Mackinnon Lawrence from Pike Research
in a report.
But the challenge is also about ensur-
ing that products consumed in mega-cities
create less waste.
Designing products for recycling and
remanufacturing has tremendous benefits
and is also a goldmine. It is estimated that
the annual market in these areas is more
than USD 300 billion in the EU alone,”says
David Gillblom, sustainability expert at
Semcon.
This can involve anything from us-
ing less material to knowledge of where a
product is used and for how long.
“Reusing products is not difficult, as
long as you have a clear strategy when de-
signing the product,”he says. 1
12 FUTURE BY SEMCON 3.2012
FOCUS:
MEGA-CITIES
Waste
CHALLENGE 4:
“Designing products for recycling
and remanufacturing has tre-
mendous benefits and is also a
goldmine.”
David Gillblom, sustainability expert at Semcon
All over the world, healthcare is coming
under increasing pressure. Factors affecting
human health are concentrated in cities:
pollution in air and water, access to food,
epidemics, risk of crime and natural disas-
ters. However, the greatest long-term prob-
lem is undoubtedly the aging population.
Medical advances, combined with better
living conditions - why many people move
to mega-cities – partly help us live longer
and partly cause more and more people to
live with multiple illnesses for many years
and are unable to take care of themselves.
According to the OECD, a person over
75 will cost five times as much as someone
aged 25–34 and aging is estimated to ac-
count for 6–7% of the increase in health-
care costs each year.
The World Bank has calculated that
developing countries account for 90% of
the world’s disease burden, but only 12%
of health care spending. The healthcare
system in Lagos cannot even meet basic
needs for their many patients with HIV/
AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and Mum-
bai, India’s most populous municipality,
spends about 25% of its budget on health,
but can still only take care of about 20% of
the population.
The increase in the number of older
people, together with a lack of capacity
and spiralling costs, means that many are
investigating the possibility of moving care
into the home. This includes systems for
measuring, recording and monitoring, with
things such as sensors that control various
health conditions and bodily functions. In
some experiments this information is sent
to hospitals and specialists via telephone
and computer communications.
Healthcare
CHALLENGE 5:
45per cent of journeys to
work in Istanbul are
made on foot
“Mobility! And by this I’m not primarily
talking about better technology to reduce
harmful emissions, even if this is critical. I
mean social solutions that reduce the need
for transport in cities, but also solutions
that make it easier for people to change
between different modes of transport.”
In many cities it is becoming more com-
mon to rent a car instead of owning. Car
pools are growing in popularity and many
major car companies are trying to take a
lead by creating more flexible solutions.
BMW, for example, has invested heav-
ily in“car sharing”with Germany’s largest
car rental company Sixt in a project called
DriveNow. This started in Munich and is
spreading to more and more cities.
DriveNow is based on those who need
to hire a car looking on the internet or via
mobile phone. The system tells you where
the nearest available car is, and whoever
wants to can book it with a few presses of
a button.
Then all you have to do is take the va-
cant car. Anyone looking to rent a Drive-
Now car has to register and receive a spe-
cial chip attached to their driving licence.
The chip works as a door key to the hire
car, which has no ignition key and starts
via a starter button.
Sixt has calculated that with 300 loan
cars in Munich, the average distance to the
nearest available car should be 500 metres.
When you have finished with the car, it
is left at the nearest parking space within
the city limits.
But not everyone believes that today’s
car makers will provide the solutions of
the future.
“I don’t have high hopes of the tradition-
al car companies, because they are devoted
to their existing business models. There is
a huge inertia and a lot of fixed investments
in the old methods. This will make it diffi-
cult for them to become successful players.
I think we’re going see new players,”says
William J Mitchell, a professor at MIT.
Santiago Mejía Dugand, a PhD student
in Industrial Environmental Technology at
Linköping University in Sweden, describes
how Mexico City manages its traffic prob-
lems.
“Here, inspired by Bogotá, they have
succeeded in introducing a system, Bus
Rapid Transit (BRT), which is now spread-
ing across the world.”
In brief, BRT means that buses have
their own lanes in the middle of wide
streets, which means that they only need to
stop at bus stops and major intersections.
“These rapid bus services have had
major social impacts. People can access the
city in a different way and can move about
more freely. Crime has decreased, more
people are daring to go out, more chil-
dren can go to school and more adults can
get home in time from work to help their
children with homework. Consumption
increases and the level of education rises,”
says Mejía Dugand. 1
Mobility
CHALLENGE 3:
20 years ago,four out of five Beijing residents cycled to work.Nowadays,China is the world’s largest car
market,and the increased number of cars scares cyclists off.New bicycle lanes and bicycle parking will
increase the number of cyclists by 25% in 5 years.

FOCUS:
MEGA-CITIES
When the UN presented its annual report
in 2011, Revision of the World Urbani-
zation Prospects, for the first time the
geographical coordinates of all cities with
over 750,000 inhabitants were included.
This gave the researchers the opportunity
to connect large population groups with
environmental factors, such as proximity
to the coast, climate zones and earthquake-
affected areas.
One initial analysis was striking:
Of the 450 urban areas with over one
million inhabitants (equivalent to 1.4 bil-
lion people), 60% (890 million
people) were in risk regions
which can suffer from at
least one type of natural
disaster. This, com-
bined with the recent
extreme climate
with an increased
number of cy-
clones, has led to
intense develop-
ment in technology.
The UN relief
agency UNISDR this
year released new figures
on how weather-related
natural disasters have in-
creased sharply over the last two
decades. Floods, storms and cyclones have
in particular increased steadily, along with
droughts and heat waves. For example, 59
floods and 76 cyclones occurred in 1992,
whereas the respective number was 154 and
84 last year.
“Around 90% of all natural disasters
in the last 20 years have been caused by
weather. The increase in these disasters can
be linked to climate change. Large-scale ur-
banization and poor disaster preparedness
have caused the consequences to be enor-
mous economically, politically and socially,”
Margareta Wahlström, head of the UN relief
agency told Svenska Dagbladet.
Recent major natural disasters such as
the earthquake in the Indian Ocean in 2004
which caused a devastating tsunami, Hurri-
cane Katrina which hit the southern United
States in 2005 and the storm Sandy which
hit New York and other places this year,
have not just created an explosion of inter-
est in refined warning systems. They have
also, in every mega-city around the world,
accelerated discussions on levees and other
defences against increased water levels.
UNISDR has estimated the cost of the
natural disasters of the last 20 years,
in terms of economic value and
human life. These natu-
ral disasters (including
earthquakes) killed 1.3
million people, af-
fected 4.4 billion and
caused economic
losses of 2,000 bil-
lion dollars.
In addition to re-
ducing emissions to
affect climate change,
we need to improve
disaster preparedness,
Wahlström emphasizes.
This involves better plan-
ning, protection of streams, better
land use, warning systems and evacuation
plans.
She cites Bangladesh as a good example.
“Half a million people were killed there
in a cyclone in 1973. A cyclone in 1991 killed
around 200,000 people, and during the
most recent cyclone the other year only
2000 people were killed. They have done
a phenomenal job on cyclone warning sys-
tems, cyclone shelters, evacuation systems
and information campaigns. However, many
countries are not copying, partly for cost
reasons, and partly because they do not be-
lieve they will suffer.”1
Security
CHALLENGE 7:
1952 was a notorious year in England.
London, after a long period of coal-burn-
ing to keep away the unusually severe
winter cold, was hit by its hitherto worst
smog. When it suddenly became calm,
the people noticed that a thick, stinking
fog of black smoke had settled over the
city. London was paralyzed.
After a few weeks, the hospitals were
full of people and 12,000 died. Then, if it
hadn’t before, it began to dawn on mankind
how dangerous air pollution can be. The
event led to new laws on cleaner fuels. Re-
search on air pollution started in earnest.
In spite of this:
Air pollution will be the environ-
mental problem causing most premature
deaths over the next few decades, the
OECD calculates. This will be primarily
in the growing mega-cities, with more
particles and short-lived climate gases,
pollution from which kills people thanks
to heart problems and lung disease. Glob-
ally, this accounts for about 2-3 million
deaths per year.
Mega-cities are handling the problems
according to their resources. Los Angeles,
Air
CHALLENGE 6:
sources is a priority. Also, various forms of
air purifiers are developing all the time.
A good example is the new active addi-
tive in concrete, which was first tested in
Italy, with the ability to break down nitro-
gen oxides. We are therefore talking about
concrete slabs that clean the air.
“We have carried out experiments
which show that nitrogen dioxide levels
may be reduced by 20-70%, depending on,
for example, wind and light conditions,”
says researcher Monika Herrchen at the
Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology
and Applied Ecology in Germany.
In Germany and Italy this nitric oxide-
eating concrete is already used in tunnels,
on pavements and roads and in house
building.
“We can also see in tests that the sub-
stance in pavements, for example, has
long-term stability. 14-23 months after
installation, we couldn’t detect any reduc-
tion in the initial breakdown capability,”
Herrchen told Nanobiotechnews.com.
The fact that the matter of better air in
the world’s mega-cities is taken seriously
was demonstrated during the UN Confer-
ence on Sustainable Development earlier
this year. While nation states stalled in
lengthy negotiations, the world’s major
cities chose to leave their countries be-
hind. The so-called C40 Group - including
New York, Tokyo, Bogotá and Seoul - pre-
sented its own ambitious plan outside the
meeting halls. The cities in the C40 Group
are aiming to reduce their carbon emis-
sions by over a gigatonne by 2030, which
represents Canada and Mexico’s total
emissions. 1
with large financial resources, is now invest-
ing heavily in reducing harmful emissions.
In the city’s vital port area, carbon dioxide
emissions have been reduced by 70% in
recent years. It features the world’s first hy-
brid tug boat, electric trucks, and all vessels
coming to the port can choose to charge at
electrical substations instead of using diesel.
Singapore was an early pioneer in intro-
ducing traffic charges to reduce vehicle con-
gestion. It began in 1975 with a simple charg-
ing system, which was upgraded in 1998 to a
high-tech solution which charged motorists
differently depending on the time of day, for
example. A simultaneous major investment
in public transport provides alternative ways
for residents to move around. Singapore’s
system has been replicated in London, Stock-
holm and Milan, among other places.
Driving-free days are used in many mega-
cities in the world to control congestion
and keep down air pollution. The system in
Seoul is worth mentioning as it is voluntary
- and popular. Residents are encouraged to
register and receive benefits in the form of
insurance, rebates and tax credits.
The transition to more eco-friendly energy
3.71per cent is the predicted
annual growth rate of Lagos
in Nigeria between 2011
and 2025, the fastest
of all mega-cities
Electronic patient records are also a way
of increasing the chances of residents in
mega-cities to go to hospitals where they
can get care quickly. In São Paulo, patients
have a medical smart card containing their
medical records, which they can take with
them to any hospital.
In China there are greater opportunities
for mobility the larger the city is. Right
now, for example, city planners are creating
the world’s largest mega-city in southern
China by merging nine cities with 42 mil-
lion inhabitants.
“The idea is that when the cities are in-
tegrated, people will travel about freely and
use healthcare and other services in differ-
ent areas. For example, you can then check
the Internet to find out which hospital is
less busy,”says Ma Xiangming, community
planner at Guangdong Rural and Urban
Planning Institute, to The Telegraph.
Hopes that IT and“remote”healthcare
at home can solve some of the problems
of future healthcare needs have to be com-
bined with the ability to organize health-
care in an efficient manner, particularly in
mega-cities where the number of patients
is large and concentrated in a specific area.
Healthcare in the poorest regions of
mega-cities is also to a large extent about
innovative ways of informing and educat-
ing people about everything from the im-
portance of hygiene to nutrition and how
the right foods can prevent diseases.
So-called screening buses, such as with
mammography, also allow healthcare to be
offered in poor and peripheral regions. 1
60per cent of New Yorkers’
journeys to work are
made by public
transport
During the 50s and 60s London suffered so
seriously from smog that thousands of people
died.Smog is still a major problem for many
of the world’s mega-cities.
“In Germany and Italy, nitric
oxide-eating concrete is already
used in tunnels, on pavements
and roads and in house building.”
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A NEWWAY FORWARD
FOR MEGA-CITIES
FOCUS:
MEGA-CITIES
TEXTLINDA KARLSSON ELDH PHOTOS DANIEL KUNZFELD
Whystartwithtoday’scarswhendevelopingthoseof
tomorrow?ThatwasSemcon’sthinkingwhenproducingits
newconceptcar,UrbanMovE–atechnicalinnovation,tailor-
madefortheurbantrafficenvironmentofthecomingdecades.

I
t may look like a regular car, but
beneath the surface Semcon’s new
electric concept care, Urban MovE,
conceals a series of refinements and
innovations. Such as electric hub
drive, three alternative drive systems,
lightweight materials like MnE21 and
natural fibres, decentralized presence-
controlled HVAC, HMI control via Tablet PC
and much more. The starting point was to
make use of all the experience that Semcon
has accumulated through its long-standing
partnerships with the world’s leading auto-
mobile manufacturers. But instead of being
based on existing products, the ambition was
to create something new, something com-
pletely based on future e-mobility require-
ments, particularly in mega-cities. The goal of
the project has been to produce a car designed
specifically for commuters, small families
and young people in urban traffic environ-
ments. There was great interest when the
concept car was first presented at this year’s
International Suppliers Fair (IZB) in Wolfs-
burg, where Future by Semcon met Thorsten
Falldorf, spokesman for Semcon’s e-mobility
technology group and project manager for
Urban MovE.
“As a supplier of engineering services, we
are demonstrating that Semcon is an innova-
tive partner for both alternative and complete
vehicle concepts. Our stand is full of people,
from large OEM companies and potential IT
partners to interested students who want to
get involved in the project,”he says.
AT A TIME WHEN cities are growing at an in-
creasing rate and there is an ongoing debate
about the new urban challenges facing the
automotive industry, Semcon is focusing on a
four-seater in the compact class.
“We have discussed many different con-
cepts, including the so-called micro car, but we
decided to go ahead with a vehicle concept that
can be used in the near future,”says Falldorf.
Major automakers like Audi, Opel and
Volkswagen have all in the past produced a
concept micro car, but it is generally ac-
cepted that it will be a while before these
concepts are ready for mass production. A
new infrastructure has been created in cities
and environmentally-friendly vehicles have
gained wider acceptance with motorists.
“Only when these conditions are met will
the market be ready for micro cars,”Falldorf
says, pointing out Masdar City in the United
Arab Emirates as an early example of this new
futuristic infrastructure.
THE GOAL FOR Masdar City is to become the
world’s first carbon-neutral city and is also
the first city with a road network based on the
Personal Rapid Transit system, an under-
ground network where residents individually
move from one point to another with the help
of small driverless electric vehicles - the pre-
sent day resembling a science fiction movie.
“The project is very exciting and can be
viewed as an example of the alternative infra-
structure that future mega-cities will require,”
Falldorf says, and continues:
“It is a future where small, lightweight
single-seater cars drive through the towns
in narrow lanes and where trucks and freight
transport are completely separate from pas-
senger transport to guarantee the safety of
micro cars. It is also a future where vehicles
can be used as links in a chain across the
highway. Anything is possible, but with MovE
we’re looking at the next 10 to 20 years.
WITH THE MOVE concept car Semcon is taking
on one of the major challenges that the world’s
growing cities face: the need to reduce emis-
sions of carbon dioxide and harmful particles
- or eliminate them completely, given the fact
that fossil fuels are a finite resource. MovE has
three alternative drive systems, two of which
are driven entirely by a hydrogen fuel cell
equipped with a pressure tank or LOHC tank
(LOHC stands for Liquid Organic Hydrogen
Carriers). The third drive system is particularly
suited to motorists in an urban traffic environ-
ment, where you do not need to use the car to
travel long distances every day. It uses a battery
as the main power source along with a smaller
fuel cell as a range extender. A range extender is
an external drive source which permits driving
for longer distances if necessary. The wheels
are fitted with electric hub drive. Depending on
driving style and external circumstances, the
development team expect the car to be able to
go for 100 km on battery power alone.
WITH MOVE SEMCON is aiming for a target audi-
ence with a preference for a smaller yet still
comfortable electric car. So in terms of size
it has been greatly inspired by the Audi A1
vehicle concept. However, one big difference
compared to many other current electric cars is
that it is not based on an existing car. Instead,
it is following the idea that electric cars may, on
the outside, resemble conventional cars with
internal combustion engines, but look com-
pletely different on the inside. Therefore MovE
is entirely a development of Semcon’s own.
“The term e-mobility is not the same as an
electric vehicle. You have to consider the car
as a whole and take into account the particu-
lar demands an electric motor has. It is pri-
marily about reducing energy so the battery’s
scope has to be optimized. Acoustics are an-
other important theme because an electric car
feels completely different without a combus-
tion engine to drown out other sounds. Pe-
destrians and most of all the blind have to be
able to hear that an electric car is approach-
ing. Just rebuilding a regular car is simply not
the best way to work,”says Falldorf.
In terms of design MovE can be character-
ized as“a return to minimalism”and has been
reduced to the essentials in order to visualize
floating silently, energy flow and aerodynam-
ics. Furthermore, the development team has
placed an emphasis on the use of differ-
ent material concepts. In the body, a frame
system in aluminium and the magnesium-
manganese mix MnE21. Inside the car there is
“Merely rebuilding a regular
car is simply not the best
way to work.”
Thorsten Falldorf, Urban MovE project manager
FOCUS:
MEGA-CITIES
ThorstenFalldorf
Office:SemconWolfsburg,Germany
Title:UrbanMovEProject Manager
8innovationsinUrbanMovE
 Areturn tominimalismindesign.
 Aluminiumframewithskidplateinmagnesium-
manganesemixMnE21.
 Unusualseat concept where therearseat canbe
foldedbackand turnedintoabenchin theboot.
 InnovativeHMIconcept whereallfunctionsare
controlledbyaTablet PC.
 Decentralizedairconditioning.
 Environment-controlledairflow toreduceenergy
demand.
 PTCandPeltiercomponentsinheadrests,dash-
board,roof,etc.
 Threedifferent drivesystems:fuelcellequipped
withapressure tankorLOHC tankalongwitha
batterywithasmallfuelcellasarangeextender. Drive system 1:Fuel cell Drive system 2:LOHC tank (Liquid Organic Hydrogen
Carriers)
Drive system 3:Battery with a small fuel cell as a
range extender.
Decentralized,environment-controlled air
conditioning
UrbanMovEisaproject withinSemcon’s technicalroadmapforvehicledesigncalledSafe,Lean,Light,Smart.
a focus on natural fibres.
The interior is characterized by a number
of innovations, such as a decentralized heat-
ing, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC)
system. A number of smaller PTC and Peltier
modules in the doors, headrests, roof and
dashboard ensure that the air is controlled by
the surroundings, thereby reducing the car’s
energy needs.
“If you look at today’s electric cars, the
electric compressor for air conditioning is
a component that draws a huge amount of
energy from the battery. The challenge with
alternative solutions is of course that today’s
users are extremely spoiled by the fast-acting
air-conditioning that these compressors pro-
vide,”says Falldorf.
COMMUNICATION IS ALSO a hot topic for the
future - and also for Semcon. Future cars are
not only expected to communicate with each
other but also with traffic lights and traf-
fic control systems. This will make car travel
safer, but of course more comfortable. These
features require an internet connection in the
car. So for MovE an HMI concept has been
developed, where all functions are controlled
by a Tablet PC.
“The Tablet PC will have a central func-
tion in the car. An HMI concept where all the
infotainment functions are controlled via a
touch interface supplemented by vibrations
and 3D sound, for example, so as not to dis-
tract the driver. We believe that it will open
an important market segment for car apps,”
says Falldorf.
Future drivers should be able to interact in a
whole new way with the car. For example, the car
should be able to learn from behaviour patterns
and thus make life easier for the driver. It could
be simple information such as the next hydro-
gen filling station or where the next favourite
restaurant is. The Tablet PC can also help out-
side the car, for example with map functions to
help the user find their way back to the car.
“In this car you can see all the skills Sem-
con has developed with customers such as
VW or other suppliers over the years. We’re
now looking forward to implementing parts of
the concept together with our customers.”1
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SemconTalks
You can also see SemconTalks,where Niclas,
Anders and Fernando discuss the challenges of
mega-cities and how technological develop-
ment can be part of the solution.
Youtube:Go to youtube.com/SemconGlobal
iPad:Search for Semcon in the App Store
ForSemconthechallengesofmega-citiesareopportunitiesforinnovation
anddevelopment.NiclasGräns,AndersSundinandFernandoOcañadiscuss
whattheurbanfuturecouldlooklikewithconnectedsmartproducts,
sustainabilityandcollaborativeconsumption.
TEXT KATARINA MISIC PHOTO ANDERS DEROS
FOCUS:
SEMCON TALKS
N
iclas Gräns, Anders Sundin
and Fernando Ocaña see the
challenge of mega-cities from
different perspectives - energy,
the human-machine ratio and
mobility – but they agree on one thing.
“Mega-cities open up new opportunities for
much of the emerging technology that we see
today. There are 10, 20, sometimes 30 million
people living in a common system who can in-
teract with each other through technology to
make their everyday life simpler, smarter and
more sustainable,”says Anders Sundin, head
of the Human Factor group at Semcon.
But the road will be lined with large chal-
lenges, not least for many of the emerging
mega-cities in Asia and Africa.
“The questions for cities like Delhi, Kin-
shasa and Dhaka are a lot more basic at this
stage. Delhi, for example, has quadrupled its
energy needs in a short time. How do we meet
them? The answer is often oil and coal, despite
ambitions of sustainability. Things are simply
moving too fast,”says Niclas Gräns, business
developer in areas including energy at Semcon.
One of the biggest challenges for many
mega-cities is mobility - how do millions of
people and vehicles get around?
“In Mexico City, where I grew up, it is not
uncommon to spend 4-5 hours per day in traf-
fic jams. The majority of tweets in Mexico are
about traffic! Therefore the question of how
we use vehicles in mega-cities is crucial. It
is evident that today’s vehicle manufacturers
do not see mega-cities as a priority market.
These products are not being developed today.
They are too heavy, large and expensive. Here,
we at Semcon can contribute with fresh ideas
and innovation,”says Fernando Ocaña, creative
director at Semcon’s Hybrid Design Studios.
“Yes, it takes patience and presence for
companies to understand their users. The
perception today is that Chinese people want
to sit in the back seat and be driven around by
private chauffeurs, which leads car manufac-
turers to manufacture extended limousines.
But this behaviour is beginning to change
among China’s middle class - they want
control, driving licences and to sit behind the
wheel themselves. What does this mean for
manufacturers?”says Anders.
At the same time, more and more is count-
ing against the whole concept of owning a car
or other products, especially in a mega-city.
Instead, people are talking about collaborative
consumption, a kind of return to communi-
ties where people exchange, borrow and rent
products and services.
“Car-sharing, for example, is nothing new -
attempts were made in Amsterdam in the 70s,
but what is new is the technology that is availa-
ble today in the form of internet, smart phones
and smart products that can lift car-sharing
to a whole new level, especially in a mega-city.
With this technology, there are great opportu-
nities for new business models where you no
longer need to own a car,”says Fernando.
“Many believe that this development can
only happen in mature mega-cities, but my
experience is that it is the growing mega-cities,
building and thinking strategically, which are
most likely to embrace innovation. Mature
mega-cities are usually stuck with complex
and expensive systems that do not directly aid
changes in technology, particularly in the en-
ergy sector. In this, power companies are an im-
portant future partner for Semcon,”says Niclas.
“There are also exciting lessons to be
learned from ongoing experiments to put a
man on Mars, for example. A great deal of the
conditions in space can apply to mega-cities
- small areas, limited resources, recycling,
interaction between people and between peo-
ple and technology. It will be very exciting to
follow,”says Anders.
They believe and hope that Semcon will
have a large role in the forthcoming mega-city
challenges.
“We have the experience and knowledge in
a variety of areas, such as connected systems,
product development, energy and vehicles,
but we are not limited by a business idea or
expensive investment. We can work with
newcomers, new technology and new oppor-
tunities and help our customers find their way
in a future urban market,”says Fernando. 1
“Mega-citiesopento newtechnology”
Niclas Gräns,Anders Sundin and Fernando Ocaña during the filming of
‘SemconTalks’along with program host Jens Orback.

THE SOLUTIONHOW SEMCON SOLVED THE CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM
ASSIGNMENT: Selecta wanted to create a new
standalone coffee maker that can easily be adapted
for different customers’needs.
SOLUTION: Semcon was hired for the pilot study,
design work and technical support. The Selecta
Ferrara is modular and easy to configure. It is a
coffee machine with a dual brewer which brews
both with and without pressure so that the user
can choose anything from traditional Swedish
freshly brewed coffee (without pressure) to a
perfect espresso (with pressure).
RESULT: After more than a year of product
development, the Ferrara was launched at the end
of August and went on sale in September. Before
the launch it was exhibited at several trade fairs
and received favourable reviews.
TEXT MARCUS OLSSON PHOTO SEMCON
Modular
coffeemaker
BEAN CANISTER
Thecontaineron topof themachinemakes
thecoffeebeansvisible to theuser.When
thebeverageisselected thebeansflow
through themachineinalinearprocess.
COVER
Thefront of themachineismadeof
amixtureofPCandABSplasticand
containsaluminiumdetails.Thedesign
visionwas tocapture thefeelofanau-
thenticItaliancoffeebar,where theuser
becomesabarista.
TOUCHSCREEN
Theintuitivecolour touchscreenpresents
thechoices to theuser.Bypressingafew
buttonsyoucancontrolbeveragestrength
and theamount ofmilkandsugar.Inaddi-
tion,thereisinformationabout theselected
coffee type,with thenutritionalcontent and
theamount ofmilkandsugar.
LED-ILLUMINATED CUP DISPENSER
TheFerrarahasaclear,energy-efficient light
sourcewhichilluminates thecuparea,thus
indicating to theuserwhere thecupshould
beplaced.
CHANGEABLE FRONT
TheFerraraisavailableinfivedifferent
versionswithacommoncabinet and
replaceablecomponents that adapt the
machineaccording to thecustomer’s
needsanddesires.Inless than30min-
utes,technicianscanreplace thefront
andcreateanewvariationof themodel.
Dependingon theuse,it canbesup-
plementedwithabuilt-inautomaticcup
dispenserandacoinslot forpayment.
POWER SAVING MODE
Themachinehasabuilt-inenergy-
savinglearningfunction.Afterhaving
beenusedforsome time themachine
scheduleswhen to turnitselfoffor
restart.Whenit isnot inuse,it enters
sleepmodeanduses theminimum
energyrequired.Preventivemain-
tenanceprogramsreducecarbon
emissionsandreducedowntimeand
unplannedengineeringcall-outs.
DUAL BREWER
The brewer is the heart of the
machine and can handle several
different types of beverage,both
with and without pressure where
necessary.You can choose between
brewed coffee and espresso,fresh-
ly ground or beans,organic and
fair trade.There is also a separate
tea maker.

W
e all remember the seven
dwarfs in Snow White.
With picks and lanterns
in their hand, they came
trudging back from yet
another day in the mine. In the past, they
didn’t have much more help than that. If
the rock was so hard that picks, wedges and
levers didn’t work, the rock could be burned
and heated up and you could carry on mining.
It became a little easier in the 18th century
when gunpowder was introduced - and later
dynamite was also used. But it was still hard,
strenuous work with high risks for everyone
involved.
Today, most things look different. At Atlas
Copco Mechanical Rock Excavations (MRE)
office in Örebro, there are photographs of
advanced rock mining machinery, and there
are also several miniature models of machines
around the premises. It is also here in the
office cubicles that future solutions for rock
excavation are developed - both pure develop
ment projects and the modification and im-
provement of existing products.
“The work here is both varied and exciting.
I’m at the forefront all the time and it is a fan-
tastic opportunity to be involved in designing
new products,”says Andreas Stråth, a Semcon
consultant and mechanical engineer at MRE,
Within“raiseboring”,AtlasCopcoMechanicalRock
Excavationhasbecometheworld-leadingsupplierfor
theinternationalminingindustry.Thehugemachinesare
developedinÖrebroandSemconispartofthejourney.
TEXT LOTTA RINGDAHL PHOTOS ATLAS COPCO MATTIAS ERMANBRIX
GIANT IN
THEMINE
A


How raise boring works
Apilot holewithadiameterof50cmisdrilled,using
drillpipes,fromahigher toalowerlevel,fromground
leveldownintoa tunnel,forexample.Thedeeper the
hole,themoredrillpipesneeded.
Once thepilot holereaches the tunnel thedrill
headischangedforareamer,with thesamedimen-
sionsas thefinishedhole.
Thereameris thendrawnbackup through the
rock,leavingbehindaround,smoothborehole.The
cuttings,theloose,drilledrock,fallsdowninto the
lower tunnel throughcavitiesin thereamerandcan
thenbeeasilycarriedawaybyaminevehicle.
Raiseboringcandigholesup toakilometredeep
withadiameterofsixmetres.AtlasCopco’sraisebor-
ingmachinescanbeplacedeitherundergroundor
onelevelmaybeat thesurface.
as he proudly shows us around.
MRE’s main activities are within raise bor-
ing, which has multiple uses. It can be used in
the mining industry, for example for drilling
passages between two levels in a mine. But it
can also be used in other aspects of society -
to drill drainage shafts, or holes for ventila-
tion from a city subway.
THE PROCEDURE STARTS with a pilot hole, which
is drilled from a higher to a lower level. Once
the pilot hole reaches the tunnel, the drill
head is exchanged for a reamer with the same
dimensions as the finished hole. The reamer
is then drawn back up through the rock. The
cuttings (the rock which has been drilled
away) drop into to the lower tunnel through
cavities in the reamer. The procedure can also
be carried out the other way around - from
the bottom tunnel and up - if the ground
above is unavailable for any reason, for ex-
ample. This reverse drilling is called boxhole.
Raise boring can be carried out to a diameter
of up to six metres, and holes with a length of
one kilometre are not uncommon. They can
also be drilled vertically, horizontally and at
different angles.
THE FIRST WORKING raise boring machine was
built by the American James Robbins as
early as 1962, which had great importance to
mining worldwide. The method made its big
breakthrough in the 1970s and a total of 35
different models were produced, including
the bestselling 73 model. Atlas Copco bought
the Robbins company in 1993 and has since
improved the machines’performance and en-
ergy efficiency and enhanced the ergonomics
- but the method itself is still the same. And
the machines last a very long time.
“There are 35-year-old rigs still in use.
This is not at all unusual. Three years ago, we
sold parts for a machine that was manufac-
tured in 1962 and is still operating in Mexico,”
Atlas Copco Mechanical
Rock Excavations
Atlas Copco has four business areas,and min-
ing and rock excavation technique is one of
them.This group includes Rock Drills AB in
Örebro and the MRE department - Mechanical
Rock Excavation.This focuses on mechanical
rock excavation,both in terms of new develop-
ment projects and the modification and im-
provement of existing raise boring units.MRE
has about 60 employees.

“There are 35-year-old rigs
still in use.”
Stefan Dahlberg, technical manager, Altas Copco MRE
StefanDahlberg
TechnicalManager
AtlasCopcoMRE,
Örebro,Sweden
says Stefan Dahlberg, MRE technical director.
He adds that this can be compared with
traditional drilling/blasting equipment,
which only has a life span of 6-8 years. Raise
boring is also faster and has greater safety for
the operator than traditional blasting, since
the operator can be positioned in a well-ven-
tilated and secure part of the tunnel.
ON AVERAGE ATLAS Copco sells 12-20 of these
machines per year and almost all are custom-
ized according to customer-specific requests
such as height, width, transport measure-
ments, shipping method, modularity, etc.
All special solutions are organized at MRE,
and all mechanical components, down to the
cogs in the gearbox, are the department’s own
designs.
“The actual control system is the same for
all the different products, which is a great ad-
vantage. If you’ve controlled one rig, you feel
at home,”adds Dahlberg.
THE LARGEST MARKETS are in South Ameri-
ca, Russia and Australia, but Sweden also
has a part of it with the mining contractor
Bergteamet. There are raise boring units in
both Kiruna and Garpenberg, which is inci-
dentally the oldest mine in Sweden.
In all, MRE involves around 60 people,
within business development, purchasing and
preparation, service and maintenance, most of
whom are consultants like Andreas.
“A good consultant should be able to work
independently, and deep-down you need to
be an innovator,”says Dahlberg, stressing that
Andreas is also a talented designer.
There is no doubt that Andreas Stråth
enjoys his job. He lights up when talking
about his thoughts and solutions for various
projects.
“I get to both design new products and
make new designs for existing ones. I have
the coolest assignment at Semcon,”he says.
Stråth has now worked at Atlas Copco for
six years in total, the last two of which he has
been participating in various development pro-
jects at MRE. One of them is known as Easer
searchfo
r“semcon”in
appstore
Extra
material
on iPad

Das neueste Entwicklungsprojekt von MRE ist
die gigantischeTunnelvortriebsmaschine für
die Bergbaugesellschaft RioTinto.Dieser Riese
wiegt 700Tonnen und ist etwa 70 Meter lang.
»Ich kann ganz neue Produkte
entwickeln, aber auch die
Konstruktion vorhandener
Produkte verbessern. Ich
habe einfach den besten Job
bei Semcon.«.”
Andreas Stråth, Mechanischer Konstrukteur, Semcon
AndreasStråth
Position:MechanischerKonstrukteur
Standort:Semcon,Örebro,Schweden
allerdings in Bezug auf ein anderes Projekt,
die Tunnelvortriebsmaschine (TVM) Mobil
Miner, an der sie zusammen mit der briti-
schen Bergbaugesellschaft Rio Tinto arbei-
ten. Das Projekt läuft bereits seit Jahren und
befindet sich nun in der Endphase.
Stråth: »Hier geht es um eine Tunnelvor-
triebsmaschine mit einem Gewicht von über
700 Tonnen und einer Länge von etwa 70 Me-
tern – eine rollende Tunnelfabrik. Eine TVM
in herkömmlicher Bauweise ist ebenso groß wie
der Tunnel, den sie vortreibt. Hierdurch kann
sich die Einheit festfahren, wenn sich das Ge-
stein bei hohem Gesteinsdruck und großen Tie-
fen ›setzt‹. Die Bohrung, die die TVM erzeugt,
ist jedoch größer als die Maschine selbst. Hinzu
kommt, dass sich das System seitlich sowie
nach oben und unten bewegen kann.«
Vorn an der Maschine gibt es ein
Schneidrad mit 4,5 Metern Durchmesser
und 56 sogenannte Cutter, die jeweils einen
Durchmesser von 43 Zentimetern haben. Da-
mit lässt sich Gestein mit einer Festigkeit von
bis zu 250 MPa brechen. Die TVM ist unter
anderem auch mit einer Einheit für Felskon-
solidierung, einer für Spritzbeton und Armie-
rungsnetze sowie einer Backup-Einheit mit
voll ausgestatteter Rettungskapsel ausgerüs-
tet. Unter der Maschine verläuft ein Trans-
portband, das das Bohrgut vom Schneidrad
wegbefördert und hinter der Maschine
auswirft. Mit einem nachfolgenden Dumper
lässt sich das Bohrgut dann entsorgen. »Der
Vorteil ist, dass dieses Verfahren keine langen
Wartezeiten wie bei herkömmlichen Bohr-
Spreng-Methoden kennt, bei denen das Bohr-
gut zwischendurch abtransportiert werden
muss. Daher geht die Arbeit auch schneller
voran und ist außerdem wesentlich sicherer.«
Nächstes Jahr steht der Funktions- und
Feldtest in der Rio-Tinto-Grube in Salt Lake
City an, unter offensichtlich idealen Voraus-
setzungen. Man hofft, mehr als zehn Meter
Vortrieb am Tag zu schaffen, also fast doppelt
so viel wie bei konventionellen Verfahren.
»Dies ist das größte Projekt, an dem MRE
je beteiligt war. Wir haben zwar schon mit
ähnlichen Maschinen gearbeitet, aber diese
Entwicklung ist auch für uns etwas ganz Be-
sonderes«, fasst Dahlberg zusammen.
BISHER WURDE DIE TVM-Ausrüstung exklusiv
für Rio Tinto entwickelt; nach Abschluss des
Projekts soll sie jedoch frei auf dem Markt er-
hältlich sein. Hätten Schneewittchens Zwerge
die Chance gehabt, dann hätten sie sie ganz
bestimmt sofort ergriffen. 1
HEINZ SCHWARTZ
HEINZ SCHWARTZ, CTO, SEMCON
GERMANY
HOBBIES horse riding,jogging,reading.
GADGETS
I LIKE
TISSOT T TOUCH
TISSOT
“Most watch enthusiasts are into expensive mechanical
watches,but for me it is much more interesting to have
a watch with cool functionality.A watch is normally
just a watch,but this is more of a gadget.It has a touch
display with which you can check the temperature,your
altitude and other bits of information that you don’t
really need.This watch means a lot to me because my
wife bought it for me for our anniversary.”
APPLE TV
APPLE
“I love Apple products – so much so that my friends
call me iGod! I have an iPod,an iMac and an iPhone,
but right now the most exciting thing for me is
Apple TV.Many of my friends also have Apple TV so
when we are at each other’s houses we can share
music and photos and video clips via this device.I
think this gadget is really changing the way people
share information with each other.”
BOSE QUIETCOMFORT 15 ACOUSTIC
NOISE CANCELLING HEADPHONES
BOSE
“I had been thinking about getting a pair of these
headphones for a long time.Now I have them I use
them all the time when travelling by train or plane
– and when I’m doing the vacuum cleaning at
home at weekends.The first time you put them on
they feel a bit weird,like air pressure on your ears.
But they work just perfectly.”
ADAPTIVE CRUISE CONTROL
AUDI A6 ALLROAD
“My car is equipped with some great gadgets.
One which I use all the time is adaptive cruise
control (ACC).I don’t only use it on the motor-
way,but also for city driving,where it is really
useful in traffic jams.What is so good about the
ACC on my Audi A6 Allroad is that it doesn’t have
a maximum limit and you can go up to 220km/h.
I just have to keep the car pointing in the right
direction,and the system does everything else.”
HEAD-UP-DISPLAY
AUDI A6 ALLROAD
“I am on the phone about 95% of the
time when I’m driving,so I really appre-
ciate the heads-up display that projects
important information on to my wind-
screen.It shows my speed,navigation
information from the GPS,and also
shows me what the current speed limit
is.Together with the adaptive cruise
control it makes driving a lot safer.”
LAMBORGHINI-MOUSE
LAMBORGHINI
I have previously worked with Lamborghini and I
really like their cars,so I just had to get this com-
puter mouse.It’s a Murcielago and I bought it at
the Lamborghini headquarters in Italy.Everyone
who sees it wants one.It works just like a normal
mouse and fits perfectly in the hand,but it’s
much prettier.And it’s got headlights.
“Everyone
who sees
it wants
one.”

QA MIKE BIDDLE
PLASTICS EXPERT
For MikeBiddle, plastic is gold. And
there is a lot of it. He spoke to Future
about the challenges of recycling
plastic, why demand for green
products will only grow, and how
designers can ensure that their
products get more than just one life.
s a child Mike Biddle would
exasperate his parents by
going round the house
turning off lights. His
loathing of waste soon
extended from energy to
materials as well, and after
becoming a chemical engi-
neer he turned his atten-
tion to the growing problem
of plastic waste. Having
started out in his garage,
Biddle’s company MBA Polymers has plants in
the US, Asia and Europe producing high-quality
plastics from discarded consumer electronics
and car parts that would otherwise end up on a
landfill or in an incinerator. Biddle’s efforts have
earned him many prestigious awards and his
thought-provoking TED Talk has been watched
by more than 700,000 people.In December he
will receive the Gothenburg Award for Sustain-
able Development (previous recipients include
Kofi Annan and Al Gore).
How did you get involved in recycling plastic?
“I actually started working at the complete
opposite end of plastics, in high-tech compos-
ites for aerospace, and I worked on the Stealth
bomber project. But that wasn’t very fulfilling
and what I got excited about was trying to figure
out if we could recycle plastics, because I saw that
as a growing issue at this time, about 25 years
ago. Around that time a couple of cities in the
US banned polystyrene foam cups because they
weren’t recyclable – and Dow was the biggest
producer of that material in the world. I started a
plastic recycling research group for Dow and we
did some good work. A few years later I decided
to go out on my own and start a consulting com-
pany.”
What is the scale of the problem with plastic
waste?
“More than 250,000,000 tonnes of plastic are
produced and consumed around the world every
year. A bit of that does get recycled; pet bottles
often get recycled because they are easily recog-
nisable and recyclable by humans or machines, as
TEXT DAVID WILES
FOTO ERIC MILETTE
A
searchfo
r“semcon”in
appstore
Extra
material
on iPad

do some polyethylene milk jugs here in the us
and a few other places. But almost everything
else is wasted. So it’s an enormous problem.
Most of it is made either from natural gas or
oil, so it is a resource that we are obviously
going to run out of at some point.
So your driving force is to save the environ-
ment?
“I’m not doing what I am doing just for
the environmental aspects. I’m doing it
because I think there is a more efficient
way of making plastics. In the long term,
instead of making them from resources
that are becoming scarcer, let’s make them
from resources that we have plenty of, such
as waste. So it’s more sustainable from a
business standpoint as well as an environ-
mental sustainability standpoint.”
Why aren’t more companies doing what
you do?
“Because it’s not easy. If you put a pile of
metal on the table in front of me and give
me a magnet, then I can separate most of
it pretty accurately. And if I can do it, you
can train machines to do it. Plastics are
like metals in that there are many different
types, and as most of us know if you mix
most metals together you get an inferior
product. And it is the same with plastics,
in general. Plastics need to be separated
just like other materials, and it is that sep-
aration that has proved to be so difficult.
Their densities overlap or are identical in
some cases; and they can be any colour. So
all the standard properties that people use
to separate different materials simply don’t
work for plastics. So we had to come up
with new ones.”
So what is your process for recycling plastic?
“We do what miners or mineral processors
do. When you’re mining for ore or minerals,
you dig up a lot of dirt and sand and stone
and crush it into small particles and use the
property differences to separate them. That
is exactly what we do, and we use some of the
same techniques they use. Different mate-
rials fracture differently and have different
geometries when they fracture, so we take
advantage of that. We use air, like sep-
arating the wheat from the chaff, to
separate foam and fabrics away from
the rigid plastic particles – al-
though we do it in a very sophisti-
cated way. What we do is therefore
not one magic process, but rather
a number of processes until we
get each plastic down to one type
or one grade. We save over 80 per
cent of the energy and 1–3 tonnes
of co2 for each tonne of virgin
plastics we replace.”
How does the quality of the plastic
you produce compare with virgin
plastic?
“We are a drop-in replacement,
one for one, for virgin plastics.
Most plastics recyclers in the world
traditionally get their plastic to a
certain level of purity, and then to
overcome the deficiencies in the
material they have created they will
often blend in virgin material or
off-grade material from manufac-
turing. Our plastic is 100 per cent
from postconsumer material apart
from the additives we add, such as
colorants and modifiers.”
How is demand developing?
We are seeing considerable
growth in demand. One reason is
that forward-thinking companies
believe there is a receptive market
for green products. Before, to be honest, I
always hoped that that would be the case
but never counted on it. Now we are seeing
it develop rather rapidly. And then there are
the standards that are driving that behaviour.
There is a barrier to some markets if compa-
nies don’t meet these standards.
What steps would you like to see designers
take to improve the environmental footprint
and recyclability of their products?
“As an environmentalist, I would like to see
them make products that last longer. And that
may be counterintuitive for a recycler to say,
because of course we benefit from short life
cycles as we get more material that way. But
I like to think that my company has always
taken a longer-term view. I’m not concerned
about running out of materials – there is
unfortunately a lot of material in the world
that goes to waste so we will have plenty of
feedstock for a long time.”
Any practical suggestions to product develop-
ers?
“I would like to see them make their
products more recyclable. What makes a big
difference for us is the use of hazardous or
exotic additives in plastics and paints or coat-
ings. These are the hardest things for plastic
recyclers to deal with. You find more and
more designers using texture and pigments
rather than paints and coatings, which not
only makes products recyclable but it also
lowers manufacturing costs. Avoiding paint
also makes sense because a lot of waste comes
from the painting steps, and then you don’t
have all the environmental aspects associated
with the painting process to begin with.”
Which companies impress you with their
approach to plastics?
“It’s hard not to talk about Electrolux sim-
ply because they have taken the use of recy-
cled plastics to another level. They have made
some beautiful vacuum cleaners out of plastic
samples that they recovered from the ocean
to highlight the issue. In the it world, hp is
clearly a leader in the use of postconsumer
recycled plastics in many products and adver-
tising it with their“ecohighlights”labelling on
some products. And companies like Lexmark,
Philips, and Trodat are also developing prod-
ucts that use recycled plastics.”
How optimistic are you about attitudes to
recycling and waste today?
“I have been frustrated for the last 25 years
because I felt people weren’t very inclined to
care about what happened when they threw
something away. But since doing my TED
Talk on this subject I have been uplifted by
the outpouring of desire to get involved and
make a difference. I do believe that people
want to act in a more sustainable way and
not waste materials and energy resources but
they don’t know how, or they are doubtful
that what they do makes a difference. So we
should make it easy for them to do it, and
convince them that what they do does make a
difference.”1
“Instead of making plastics from
resources that are becoming
scarcer, let’s make them from
resources that we have plenty of,
such as waste.” MikeBiddle,plasticsexpert
1
SHOW PEOPLE WHAT TO DO
Peoplecare,theyjust didn’t knowwhat todo.That
iswhyIspendalot ofmy time trying toget the
wordout throughsocialmedia,throughmagazines,or
likeIdidwithmydaughterandaproject shedidon this
subject at school.Solettingpeopleknowwhat theycan
dois thefirst step.
2
MAKE WASTE VALUEABLE
Aresponsiblerecyclinginfrastructurerequires
investment.I thinkEuropedidit theright way.
When theyfirst put theirrecyclinginfrastructureinplace
it wasacost that producershad topayfor.Nowless than
tenyearslater theinfrastructurehasdeveloped,and the
economiesofscalehavegrownand todaywastehasa
value.
3
SEE THE BIG PICTURE
In theUSwedon’t carewhereourwastegoes,
althoughwearestarting tocareabout where the
stuffwebuycomesfrom,asseenrecentlywithApple
and theconditionsat itsfactoriesinChina.Ifwehad the
sameconcernabout what happens tostuffwhenweare
finishedusingit wewoulddefinitelyhandleourprod-
uctsinamuchmoreresponsiblemanner.
waystoincrease
therecycling
ofplastic3
Mike Biddle
Age: 57
Title:Founder and President of MBA Poly-
mers,Richmond,California,USA
Hobbies: Spending time with my young
kids,biking,hiking,tennis
Favourite websites:TED;LinkedIn;Twit-
ter;YouTube;GreenBiz;KhanAcademy;
Pandora
Awards: Gothenburg Award for Sustain-
able Development,Economist Innovation
Award for Energy and the Environment,
theThomas Alva Edison Award for Innova-
tion,theWorld Economic ForumTechnol-
ogy Pioneer Award and others.
QA MIKE BIDDLE
PLASTICS EXPERT

Theystartedwiththree
employees,halfabilliondollars
andablankdrawingboard.In
fouryearsQorosAutoCo.,the
world’snewestcarmaker,has
developedacarwithitssights
firmlysetonitshomeChinese
market,andalsoEurope.
Semconhasbeenpartofthe
journey.
TEXT DAVID WILES PHOTOS MICK RYAN
THECHALLENGER
fromShanghai

O
nly a dec-
ade ago the
Chinese auto
market was
one-tenth the
size of that in
the US. But
China’s rapid
economic
growth has
seen it over-
take the US at
breakneck speed to become the world’s big-
gest car market by a long way: 18.5m cars and
light trucks were sold there in 2011, compared
with 12.8m in the US.
Inevitably everyone wants a piece of this
huge and ever-growing pie, but how should
you go about it? Until recently there were two
ways for automakers to tackle China. There
were the major car producers such as GM and
Volkswagen who set up international joint
ventures with Chinese companies. And then
there are the domestic OEMs – somewhere
between 50 and 100 at present – striking out
on their own.
QOROS AUTO CO is following a different route –
starting from scratch with no legacy but lots
of experience, backed by an initial commit-
ment of USD 500 m from two investors and
led by a driven team of global experts with
varied cultural backgrounds. The company
develops and owns its brands and technolo-
gies and as such is in complete control of its
own destiny, and it is well on its way from just
three employees and an empty drawing board
in 2009 to start of production four years
later. Qoros’first launch, in Q4 2013, will be
followed by a new model every six months.
And not content to focus on its home market
alone, Qoros is also planning for the not in-
considerable challenge of taking on the Euro-
pean OEMs on their own turf.
The Vice-Chairman of Qoros is Volker
Steinwascher, a former Volkswagen executive
who has extensive experience in various roles
at the world’s largest carmaker. He joined the
project when it existed only on paper.“I was
more or less alone and I started to hire peo-
ple, to define customer segments and define
products,”says Steinwascher from his office
in Shanghai. He admits with a chuckle that
he did not fully appreciate the full scale of the
challenge that he was taking on at a stage of
his career when some of his industry peers
were already retiring. But the opportunity was
just too appealing.“I know from experience
what other companies do right and what they
do wrong,”he says.“We have no legacy here,
and we just hired the people we wanted which
makes us very efficient and very capable. The
spirit is incredible. People joined because this
was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get out of
a big organization and really make a differ-
ence.”
One of the first to sign up was Director
Sales and Marketing Stefano Villanti, who
was a consultant at McKinsey before joining
Qoros as employee number 3 in 2009.“For
me the decision took two seconds,”he says.
“When you have worked in the automotive
industry you see that it is very slow-moving
and there are many things that you would
like to do differently. It’s not often that when
someone asks you‘What are you going to do
tomorrow?’you get to answer: I’m going to
build a new OEM from scratch’.”
QOROS’ FIRST CAR, a C-segment sedan, will be
launched in March and April 2013 at major in-
ternational auto shows in Europe and China,
with sales starting at the end of the year.
“Driving dynamics, fuel consumption,
engine characteristics, power – this is a Eu-
ropean level product,”says Villanti.“We are
aiming for five-star Euro NCAP, and our tests
show that we will achieve that.”
Vehicle number two will be a hatchback,
followed by a crossover, then an SUV.“We
have a product portfolio that basically covers
the coming four years with a launch every six
months,”says Villanti.
Qoros has done painstaking market analy-
sis to ensure that its products are perfectly
placed to capitalize on the Chinese auto mar-
ket’s growth.“The market is split in two,”says
Villanti.“You have the local Chinese players
that are usually characterized by entry-level
products, very cheap and usually very low
quality; and then the international products.
The rising middle-class is looking at the
high-quality products associated with West-
ern cars, so that is what we are aiming at.”
The Chinese market differs from the West
in that car buyers are generally younger; over
60% of mid-segment car buyers in China are
under 40, compared with less than 20% in
“We have no legacy here, and we
just hired the people we wanted
which makes us very efficient
and very capable”
Volker Steinwascher, Vice-Chairman of Qoros
JohanEkener
Title:President Informaticat Semcon
Office:Göteborg,Sweden
IngvarGillgren
Title:BusinessandOperational
Manager,Semcon
Office:Trollhättan,Sweden
KevinPhelps
Title:DirectorAftersales,Qoros
Office:Shanghai,China
VolkerSteinwascher
Title:Vice-Chairman,Qoros
StefanoVillanti
Title:DirectorSalesandMarketing,Qoros

Europe.“Our target consumers’key buying
factors are distinctive design, safety and reli-
ability, and brand image,”says Villanti.
“Chinese consumers are willing to consider
new brands.”
ATTRACTING BUYERS on their home market is
one thing, but how will Qoros win over Euro-
pean customers who may be skeptical of cars
made in China?“Of course that is an issue,
but if you have the right product there is a
time for everything,”says Villanti.“There was
a time for the Japanese and the Koreans, who
once had a very similar reputation to the Chi-
nese.”Extensive consumer testing in Europe
by Qoros revealed some interesting findings:
young European consumers typically have no
problem with a Chinese brand.
One way in which Qoros plans to win cus-
tomers in both China and Europe is with what
Villanti calls“a holistic customer experi-
ence”. Although unwilling to reveal too many
commercially sensitive details, he says that
the Qoros team has identified a strong dis-
connect between the buying experience, the
service experience, and the product itself. “So
when we designed this product, we designed
the service and the buying experience at the
same time. What we are trying to create is
a very coordinated experience, giving a very
consistent perception. The beauty of building
something from scratch is that it is not like
Frankenstein’s monster, with all the bits as-
sembled in different stages.”
One small detail which Villanti does dis-
close and which is sure to score points with
the iPhone generation is an app for booking
a service, for trip planning and which will
even replace the manual in the glove box.
“It’s about integration of product, service and
technology,”he says.
Kevin Phelps spent his entire career with
Jaguar Land Rover before joining Qoros as
Director Aftersales. He relishes the possibili-
ties created by the lack of legacy and existing
structures and ways of working.“We have a
clear piece of paper,”he says.“We pool all the
poor experiences we’ve had previously and
design them out. But we can also incorporate
all the requirements from all parties in one go,
rather than inheriting a system and trying to
make it fit other people’s requirements. Of
course the challenge is that we have nothing
to base it on, so there is a lot of hard work do-
ing the nitty-gritty.”
AND THIS IS WHERE Semcon comes into the
picture.“Starting from scratch means no
legacy, but it also means you need to define
a number of strategies within different areas
that normal car manufacturers perhaps take
for granted,”says Johan Ekener, President
Informatic at Semcon.“But we have a lot of
experience and have been able to support
Qoros in defining aspects of their aftersales
and repair strategies.”
Once Qoros had their first car designs
in place, they needed to know that such a
vehicle would be serviceable. That is, would
it be physically possible to change the oil or
a lightbulb on a car built to their designs?
In search of a second opinion, they turned
to Semcon who took over the serviceability
work to ensure that Qoros’designs would
work in practice and be cost-efficient.
QOROS ALSO CALLED on Semcon to handle the
service readiness aspects.“We are responsible
for developing the spare parts information,
the owner’s information, all the service and
workshop information including diagnosis
for guiding the technician, wiring diagrams,
plus serviceability requirements,”says Ingvar
Gillgren, Semcon’s Business and Operational
Manager for the Qoros collaboration.“We also
develop all technical training information.”By
the start of 2013 Semcon will have about 50
people working on the Qoros project, spread
around three sites in Europe and includ-
ing some ten employees at its new office in
Shanghai.
Gillgren says that Semcon has not only
been reacting to instructions and requests
from Qoros, but also coming with suggestions
based on their own experience.“What Qoros
gets from our organization is very broad and
deep experience within the aftermarket au-
tomotive business,”he says.“But we are also
very keen and interested in new ways of pre-
senting information. So we are trying to be on
the edge, not sticking to what we have done
before, and taking advantage of the fact that
they are a new company to come up with new
and innovative solutions.”
Phelps says that while Qoros’business
model is to manage through international
experience while bringing up local Chinese
management, setting up the company’s ser-
vice organization would not be possible with-
out the experience and expertise of Semcon,
alongside which he worked while at Jaguar
Land Rover.“The Chinese auto industry is
very immature, the good local people are usu-
ally with Western brands,”he says.“So it is
difficult to recruit. There is a massive require-
ment for good engineering, good service peo-
ple within the industry. And Semcon has all
the right criteria to support the international
standard that we want to implement.”
IT’S HARD NOT TO be impressed by what Qoros
has achieved in just three years, with 80
prototypes running globally and employee
numbers approaching 1,200.“This thing has
grown and developed even better than we
thought was possible,”says Villanti.
The veteran Steinwascher believes that 20
years from now, Qoros will be the benchmark
for the Chinese automotive industry.“The
other two concepts for approaching this mar-
ket are out-dated,”he says.“China needs ma-
ture car companies, and our business model is
the only one that will create this.”1
Qoros
Qoros Auto Co.is a new,independent,car
company,headquartered in Shanghai.The
company is aiming at a young,urban,target
group in China but is also aiming at becoming
the first Chinese car brand to break into Europe.
The ambition is to compete through innovative
technology in the form of superior ease of use,
connectivity in the car and a safety standard
that can compete with the best cars in
Europe.
“Semcon has all the right criteria
to support the international
standard that we want to
implement.”
Kevin Phelps Director, Aftersales, Qoros
The Qoros factory in Changshu will initially have a production capacity of 150,000 cars per year.It will be able
to produce up to 450,000 cars a year if necessary.
1
2
4
8
7
3
65
1.Bodywork
2.Painting
3.Assembly
4.Logistics Center
5.Administration
6.Dining area
7.Utility center
8.Matching center
Howanentirelynewcarbrandwascreatedinlessthanfiveyears.AQOROSLINE
DECEMBER 2007
Qoros(thenknownasCheryQuan-
tumAutoCo.)set upbysharehold-
ersIsraelCorporation,andChery
AutomobileCo.LtdwithVolker
SteinwascherasVice-President
SEPTEMBER 2008
thecompany’sShanghai
officeopens
JULY 2010
IsraelCorporationandChery
Automobileincrease total
capital toabout $1.2bn
JUNE 2010
Changshubecomeslocationfor
headquartersandfactory
AUGUST 2010
Semconjoinsproject and
startsserviceabilitywork
AUGUST 2011
Semcongetsunderwaywith
servicereadinesswork
NOVEMBER 2011
theQorosbrandislaunched
JULY 2012
over50dealergroups
commit tomore than100
pointsofsaleacrossChina
Q3 2013
projectedstart ofproduction
forfirst model
Q3 2013
projectedsalesstart
forfirst model
OCTOBER 2011
first prototypeisbuilt
MARCH 2013
Qorosfirst model tobe
launchedat Genevacarshow.

TEXT MARCUS OLSSON, KATARINA MISIC, HILDA HULTÉN
PHOTOS ANDERS LIPKIN, ANDERS DEROS, KALLE SINGER
SEMCON
BRAINS
The ventilation expert
JEANETTE CARLSSON hasworkedasama-
chinedesignerandproduct developersince
1988.But when theventilationcompany
Swegonwasbuildinganewcommercial
systemproduct,it involvedseveral tough
challenges,evenforsomeonewithJean-
ette’sexperience.
Swego’snewproduct,Tellus,isamodular
mechanicalroomthatcanbepositioned
bothindoorsandoutdoors.Itproducesand
distributesallthetemperateair,coolingen-
ergy,thermalenergyandhotwaterrequired.
“It is the first product to tie all these
things together.Many others can vent,
heat or cool down.But this is the first com-
plete solution that can do all these things,”
says Carlsson.
Shegenuinelyhad to thinkinside thebox
in thisproject.Thehydronicmodule,which
hasbeenCarlsson’swork,linksall thefunc-
tions.Inshort,everything that makesit able
toheat andcooldown.
“Therewerealmost toomany things
whichhad tobeincluded.It contains twelve
ventilators,fourheat exchangers,expan-
sion tanks,pumpsandvariouspipes.There
arelotsof tailor-madesolutions,andyet we
havenounusualcomponents.Myassign-
ment was todesign thewholeinterior.There
weremanychallengesbecausesomuchhad
togointosuchasmallpredeterminedarea.”
Theintegrationofall themodulesoffers
optimumcontrolandenergyrecycling.
Everythingisneeds-drivenanddistributed
simultaneously.
“Myjobis tomake thecomponentsservice-
friendlyfor theuser.Therearealot of
electronics.It has tobeeasy toaccessand
functional throughout.
jeanette carlsson, machine designer/product developer, semcon karlstad, sweden
“Many things can vent,
heat or cool down.
But this is the first
complete solution that
can do everything.”
Jeanette Carlsson, Semcon

SEMCON
BRAINS
The automation expert
IF YOU NEED TO automatethe
productionortestingofyour
productsthenBertilNelsonis
therightpersontoturnto.Asan
automationengineer,hemakes
surethatmachinesdotheright
things.Hiscurrentassignment
atVolvoCarsrevolvesaround
automatingthetestingofengines.
“It couldbeanythingfroman
engine test run tofindabasic
configuration,tolifeexpectancy
testsorrunninganemissionscy-
cle toensure thecarstayswithin
acceptableemissionslevels,”says
Bertil.
But Bertil’sworkactuallyre-
volvesaroundeverythingexcept
theengineitself.Heensures that
thereisa technicalspecification
for tests,evaluatesandselects
suppliers,isinvolvedin theinstal-
lationandmakessure that trials
arecarriedout,that theoperator
canhandle the test rigand that
thedataisavailable.
“Hybrid technologywithbat-
teries,forexample,ishot right
now,soyouhave tofindequip-
ment that canhandle testingit.
Meanwhile,the test systems
have tobeflexibleandmeet dif-
ferent requirements.
“Ifanyonehasabrainwaveon
how torefine thelifeexpectancy
test,forexample,youhave tobe
quicklyable toaddnew typesof
tests to thesystem.
Anautomationengineercan
doalot ofdifferent thingsina
lot ofdifferent industries.Bertil’s
expertisemainlyliesinprogram-
mingautomationsystemsand,
aswith theVolvoassignment,
translatingrequirementsinto
specifications.
“Iworkoncutting-edge tech-
nologyandit’sreallyexciting.”
bertil nelson, automation engineer, semcon göteborG, sweden
FORGET AFTERMARKET INFORMA-
TION asweknowit –a thick,printed
manualin15different languages.
Themoderncustomerwantsanapp
on theirsmartphone,wherestep-by-
stepinstructionscanbedownloaded
instantlyandwhenneeded.
“Companies with a high profile
brand image have much to gain
by aligning their aftermarket to
today’s technology,”says Robert
Hinesley,senior consultant at the
former Comet,one of Semcon’s
recent acquisitions complement-
ing the Semcon business in the
German market.
Heisasenior technicalwriterand
expert indigitalizingaftermarket
information,adaptinginformation
toeverythingfromclassicprints
tocomputerscreens,tabletsand
smartphones.
“Traditionalpublicationsare
static;apdfissimplyapdf.Inmulti-
channelproduction theinformation
adapts to themediait´sshownin.”
Doing thissuccessfullyisamajor
technicalchallenge,but alsobrings
newopportunities tostreamline
communicationandmakeit more
effective.
“Thedatacanbeinteractiveand
adaptedtothescreensize.Scope
andtypeofinformationchange
dependingonthereceiverandhowit
isdisplayed.”
Oneof thedemoprojectsof
Robert Hinesley’sgroupisamanual
foranexclusivehouseholdproduct,
producedinamulti-channelformat.
“It’sasuitableproduct type;the
target groupisrelativelyyoung,
lifestyle-focusedpeopleusing
modern technology.Theywant the
maintenancemanualasanappin
theirsmartphone.”
Aftermarket informationwillalso
bepart ofacompany´simage.
“Today,the technologyisan
opportunityforcompanies to
benchmark themselves.For
example,the technologyis
usedbysomehigh-profile
companiesin theauto
motiveindustry.”
According tohim,acriti-
calmassofusersisneeded
for the technology tohave
majorimpact.But it will.
“Today the technologyis
apossibility.In thefutureit
willbeadisadvantagenot
tohaveit.”
The multi-channel expert
robert hinesley, senior consultant, semcon munich (previously comet), germany

Megacities (Future by Semcon Magazine #3/2012)

Megacities (Future by Semcon Magazine #3/2012)

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