Diego Miralles This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Daily Sundial Online: News

   sundial.csun.edu/sun/98s/98s/0 - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/4/2002   Last Visited: 1/4/2002

   Diego Miralles, contract designer for BMW Ag., spoke to students at the University Student Union on "life-cycle economics," the idea that everything manufactured should be made of materials that can be broken down and re-used. "You have to change the way you think about how materials are used," Miralles said. "[As a designer,] I choose to use a certain material that, down the road, will affect what material the customer bought. [Where] do they end up after they're used?" Miralles received his bachelor of science in transportation design at the Art Center/College of Design in Pasadena, and has been interested in cars since he was 12. He became concerned with the world's growing population, pollution and the need to develop clean sources of energy during his college years. "I really started getting a real conscience about what I was doing, how my actions would count," Miralles said. "I wanted to affect the world in a positive way." Miralles later designed a small electric car for the growing white-collar working class in India, where fuel costs are exorbitantly high. Called the REVA, the tiny two-door vehicle has a range of 40 to 50 miles and can reach speeds of 50 mph. Just as important, nearly every part of the car can be recycled; the body panels and interior are plastic and the undercarriage is steel. Miralles currently works as a contract designer for BMW, a company he says is genuinely committed to building cars made of re-usable materials. Miralles said the electric vehicles likely to hit the market first will be hybrids - cars that use internal combustion engines to generate electricity for their batteries and electric motors. Senior Cynthia Palk, a health science administration major, said she wasn't sure what impact electric vehicles would have on American society. "I wonder how [electric cars] would affect how much people drive," Palk said. "It would put less emissions into the atmosphere." Senior Price Wilson, a history major, said he had never heard of the negative impacts of methanol. "I didn't really know about the negative sides [of methanol]," Wilson said. "there are two sides to everything."