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Piaggio Teams Up with MIT and Google for Developing the Future of Urban Transport

Piaggio Fast Forward is the newest player in the field of future transportation, and we can expect interesting things to arrive from them. As the name already says, Fast Forward is a subsidiary of the Piaggio Group and its mission is to try and anticipate the best transport solutions for the future.
Artistic rendering of a futuristic motorcycle 1 photo
Photo: tabletwallpapers.net
Honestly, it's really encouraging to hear the goals of Fast Forward described as "to explore ideas not immediately linked to profit." These words come from Nicholas Negroponte of MIT fame, one of the big names that got involved in the project.

Piaggio Fast Forward's ultimate goal is to develop new mobility platforms that can meet the future needs of crowded megacities. This means that the Italian manufacturer is already anticipating what the urban personal and even public transport might have to offer to cities with tens of millions of inhabitants.

More than individual vehicles, Fast Forward will try to provide a new approach to transport, developing modern paradigms and entire platforms to solve the commuting problems that will inherently affect such human conglomerates.

The young generations are a key factor in the development of new technologies, just like high-tech giants can help in the process

Piaggio looks like it understood that the future of transport is no longer a matter of motorcycling, and that high technology must also be involved. This is why Piaggio Fast Forward has Negroponte, founder and Chairman Emeritus of MIT's Media Lab, Trimble VP Doug Brent, and Google's Jeff Linnell on the board.

Colanino says that Piaggio Fast Forward is not trying to predict the future but to define it, and find out ways to provide solutions that meet whatever needs the future may have.

Piaggio Fast Forward was introduced in Milan, in front of a 1000-strong audience largely made of students, with thousands more watching the event streamed online and able to ask questions via Twitter.

The new Piaggio subsidiary will be based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and will be coordinated by Beth Altringer, a psychologist, designer, lecturer at Harvard's Engineering and Design School, and Sasha Hoffman, who is the co-founder of Fuzzy Compass, and an active member of the Boston Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.

Seeing Piaggio getting involved in yet one more transport project says pretty much everything about the Italian manufacturer's penchant for the future. Piaggio is currently doing very well with their MP3 scooter sharing program in Milan, and is also working with KTM to develop a new generation of electric vehicles.
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