Undertaking Arrow is proving to be greater than only a automobile to showcase Canada’s automotive and high-tech know-how. It’s spurring creativity and imaginative and prescient not solely among the many business’s established gamers but additionally, extra necessary, budding engineers, designers and programmers who symbolize the sector’s future.
Undertaking Arrow, launched in 2019 by the Automotive Elements Producers’ Affiliation (APMA), invited post-secondary college students to compete in a design contest as a part of the APMA’s bid to construct a made-in-Canada related, zero-emission idea automobile.
The winners, introduced in October 2020, had been 4 college students from Ottawa’s Carleton College of Industrial Design. The entry drew inspiration from Canada’s pure magnificence and three values — freedom, stability and ease — in addition to the form of a polar bear. The automobile seems lighter on the entrance and heavier within the rear. “One of many issues that drew me to the venture was that it might be the primary Canadian automotive,” Mina Morcos, one of many design crew members, mentioned on the time. “And one of many issues we actually had to consider was tips on how to symbolize Canada with one thing bodily, attempt to take these Canadian values and distill them into one thing we are able to all type of establish with.”
In July, the APMA introduced winners of one other competitors, spawned from Undertaking Arrow. Contributors needed to provide you with a design geared toward boosting automobile accessibility for the greater than six million Canadians with disabilities. Of that quantity, virtually 2.7 million have mobility disabilities, in response to Statistics Canada.
The inaugural Undertaking Arrow Annual Mobility Design Competitors was received by a crew at Ontario’s Humber School.
“We had been capable of produce an idea that’s distinctive in design, with a concentrate on accessible mobility that’s usually neglected in personal transportation,” mentioned crew member Nathan Lildhar. The automobile can decrease journey top for mobility-impaired customers and it has facet ramp lighting. It additionally has extra inclusive driving controls, similar to a steering knob, accelerator ring and a brake lever. The entrance seats might be stowed to permit room for a wheelchair within the cockpit.
The accessibility-design competitors received’t finish as soon as Undertaking Arrow arrives early subsequent yr. Will probably be an annual occasion designed to maintain the artistic juices flowing in an business dealing with seismic change.
“Undertaking Arrow is the way forward for Canadian automotive,” mentioned APMA President Flavio Volpe.
“It’s presupposed to be inspirational. We’re making an attempt to get children to consider the way forward for business, and never simply from a stamping-metal standpoint.”