September 20080
Pratt student, Emily Potter is one of a few lucky young designers who General Motors is counting on to help make the auto giant “green.” Over the summer, 21 interns from around the world were divided into six teams by skill in a designated studio — a set each of designers, sculptors, color and trim designers, engineers and graphic artists. The goal: design six vehicles that run free of gasoline.
As a Master’s of Industrial Design student, Potter contributed interior and exterior color and material strategies to two cars designed specifically for the Chinese and Russian markets for the year 2020.
“The cars were all designed using a hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system,” says Potter. “Keeping in mind that we were designing vehicles for an emerging market, we had to make sure that the materials chosen were lightweight, low-cost, ecologically friendly and technologically advanced.”
Some of those materials included bamboo polymers for the instrument panel and the floor and a carbon fiber alternative, made with no glass or mineral fibers, for parts of the interior door panel. Potter attributes her inclusion in the program to Pratt professor Martin Skalski, whose unconventional approach to 3-D form and color in his transportation class helped her to create attention-grabbing pieces for her portfolio. She thinks GM must have seen the work as fresh.
“After this summer, I am definitely interested in the automobile industry,” says Potter. “Because of the fuel crisis, I feel this would be an extremely challenging, but interesting, time to work for a company like GM. I anticipate a lot of change in the next few years in terms of the way we get around, and I think it would be a very fulfilling career … to be a part in that revolution.”
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