CAR MBS 2024 Unplugged

[Transcript]

[00:00:00] Jan Griffiths: Welcome to the Automotive Leaders Podcast, where we help you prepare for the future by sharing stories, insights, and skills from leading voices in the automotive world with a mission to transform this industry together. I'm your host, Jan Griffiths. That passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales with over 35 years of experience in our beloved auto industry and a commitment to empowering fellow leaders to be their best authentic selves.

Stay true to yourself, be you and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership. Let's dive in.

This episode is brought to you by Lockton. Lockton redefines business insurance and people solutions with a personal touch. Their global team of 11, 000 is driven by independence, not quarters. To tailor success for your business, discover the Lockton difference, where your goals become their mission. Independence, it's not just how you think, but how you act.

[00:01:26] Carl Anthony: Welcome to the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City, Michigan for the 59th Annual Management Briefing Seminars presented by the Center for Automotive Research or CAR MBS for short. My name is Carl Anthony, host of Auto Vision News Radio, and I'm joined by Jan Griffiths, host of the Automotive Leaders podcast. Jan, it's good to see you here in Traverse City.

[00:01:46] Jan Griffiths: It is great to be here with you, Carl, collaborating yet again.

[00:01:50] Carl Anthony: And our first collaboration was actually around CAR MBS. We had Alan Amici on President and CEO of CAR on both Auto Vision News Radio and the Automotive Leaders Podcast. Alan talked about this event, but he also talked about some other challenges facing automotive. We'll leave links in the show notes. But for this one, we're doing CAR MBS unplugged.

[00:02:14] Jan Griffiths: And we love the unplugged version because what that simply means is that we're going to rip the band aid off. And you may get some commentary that perhaps you won't hear in any other places.

[00:02:26] Carl Anthony: Yeah. And the theme this year for the 2024 MBS event is Engage, Embrace, and Embark. It's the end of the day here on Tuesday, August 6th, 2024. And things really did start off firing on all cylinders, Jan.

[00:02:41] Jan Griffiths: It was a great start on day one, Carl. I totally agree with you. One thing that I believe the conference missed last year was an emcee.

[00:02:48] Carl Anthony: Yeah.

[00:02:49] Jan Griffiths: You need a good emcee to tie it all together, to give the conference a personality. And CAR elected to use Jamie Butters from Automotive News as the emcee for day one and that was an excellent choice. I think that was a vast improvement from last year and you really felt a different vibe on day one, didn't you?

[00:03:10] Carl Anthony: Yeah, yeah. And he made a joke about editors and just because I'm an editor, I thought that was really funny.

So, Jamie, if you're listening well played my friend. For CAR MBS 2024 Unplugged, Jan, we have been set up here in the media center, getting sound bites from some of the speakers and thought leaders who have been attending this year. In this first round of interviews, we're going to hear from experts in automated driving, software defined cars, and supply chain management. We'll also hear from a group of current Wayne State students who are here as part of the Students @ MBS program. That program offers students who are passionate about pursuing a career in the automotive industry an opportunity to experience firsthand the present day issues that are driving the industry.

[00:03:57] Jan Griffiths: Yes, and you know what, Carl? I'm not a note taker. I really am not. And so, the fact that I was taking notes in day one tells you that there was some interesting content. And I can't get past this number. And it came from the presentation on the car book of deals. Since 2018, there has been a total of $160 billion in the US linked to EV. That is a huge number. So, all of you doubters out there that think that EV is never going to happen, guess again, $160 billion. It's happening. And it's just a matter of when. And as we've heard today in day one, Carl. It's not going to be a straight road, it's not going to be easy, there are going to be bumps along the way, but it's happening.

[00:04:44] Carl Anthony: With all of that said, Jan, let's welcome our first group of guests to CAR MBS 2024 Unplugged.

[00:04:52] Jan Griffiths: Tara Andringa, welcome to the show. You are the Executive Director of PAVE and you are fresh off the stage at CAR MBS and you were part of a panel discussing. The question is, the last mile, the holy grail of AV investment, separating hype from reality. So, Tara, separate the hype from reality for us.

[00:05:15] Tara Andringa: Not to carry a metaphor too far, but I liked the title that they gave us about the holy grail. And I think it's a good way to look at this, you know, if you're talking about Indiana Jones, everyone thought that the Holy Grail was going to be this big, fancy, ornate cup. And in the movie, we all remember it ended up being this really simple cup. And I think the same can be true here. Last mile can be the Holy Grail. It's what could resolve so many transportation issues, but we have to be really open-minded about what that can look like. There are a lot of last-mile possibilities. And it's not necessarily going to be this big, fancy thing. We really need to make sure we're looking at it broadly.

[00:05:53] Carl Anthony: From the PAVE website, Tara, pavecampaign.org, on the homepage you have written automated vehicles have the potential to bring greater safety, mobility, and sustainability to our roads. Can we expand on that a little bit? What does that mean?

[00:06:07] Tara Andringa: PAVE stands for Partners for Automated Vehicle Education. We're a 501c3 nonprofit and what we try to do is raise the level of public understanding about AVs. And the reason why we think this is important, or why it's necessary, AV technology is making so much progress. The technology is really good at this point, but when you compare that to public opinion polls, what you see is the public largely says, 'I don't understand it. I don't trust it. I would never get in one of those.' And so, we believe we'll never reach that potential if we don't bring the public on board. So, we'd like to have a conversation with the public, kind of demystifying the technology and, like we're doing today, kind of talking about all the different use cases and how it can, as you said, improve safety, sustainability, mobility, all these things.

[00:06:52] Jan Griffiths: Our next guest is Scott Tobin. He is the CEO of Envorso. Now, Scott, as I understand it, Envorso is a company that marries together the very best of traditional legacy auto with cutting-edge technology and software. Is that right?

[00:07:10] Scott Tobin: Yes, Jan, that's right. We have a great team, about half of which came up through the gut of the core engineering software and automobiles in the Midwest, and the other half out of straight out of the big tech companies. And it's a fantastic group and we bring the best of both worlds and make one plus one equal three.

[00:07:27] Jan Griffiths: We have such a different way of approaching design when you look at traditional auto versus software. What are some of those differences, and how do you overcome that?

[00:07:38] Scott Tobin: Well, you know, even in software, there were some, there were too many silos, right? And in hardware, we've often built them in body chassis and powertrain. And, you know, that's still somewhat how it works today, but in software, the software has to holistically control and deliver the whole vehicle. And more importantly, the vehicle customer experience.

[00:08:00] Carl Anthony: Scott, when it comes to Software Defined Vehicles, or sometimes, as we call them, SDVs for short, what are some of the challenges and considerations that we have to keep in mind right now?

[00:08:11] Scott Tobin: Yeah, the key ones are multiple hundred plus modules in the car, 150 million lines of code, many branches of code. Software residing on different modules within the vehicle. So, to take that and convert that to an SDV approach, what separates the software and the hardware is it makes the software define the customer experience, it's updatable, and with both features and quality improvements built. And this is very important on a very efficient electrical architecture, right? One or two central computes, a domain controllers, zonal controllers. And then, on top of that, the MacDaddy is the data you can collect.

[00:08:50] Jan Griffiths: Our next guest is Collin Shaw. He is president of MEMA. Collin, how are you?

[00:08:55] Collin Shaw: Doing great.

[00:08:56] Jan Griffiths: One of the very first presentations today at CAR was the CAR presentation on their infamous book of deals, and a number that struck me was the amount of investment in North America linked to EV since 2018, that number is $160 billion as an organization that advocates for the supply base. I have two words for you, stranded capital.

[00:09:26] Collin Shaw: Excellent.

[00:09:26] Jan Griffiths: What are you doing about that?

[00:09:28] Collin Shaw: I would say it's the most serious threat to the industry and the supply base that we've seen in a long time, because there's not a great one size fits all solution. The biggest things that we do are in a couple of areas: number one is making sure that the supplier voice is heard on multiple levels. Helping people to understand exactly what is happening at the supplier level, whether it's the large tier ones, the medium sized companies or the small family owned businesses. And we do that through a number of areas. We work with the OEMs on the town halls. We prepare them, we talk to them, we help them understand exactly what's happening at the supplier level, especially with some of the smaller companies so that's one area. There's a lot of work that happens behind the scenes in Washington DC that, you know, people see the conversion grants that we have helped secure for suppliers. So, the ability for suppliers to use government grants to convert some of their plants, whether it be for EVs or sustainability projects, there's funding out there. But what people don't see a lot of the time is some of the other things that we do with the government and the ideas they have around workforce that we work with to help refine.

There's a lot of people behind the scenes because of the research that we have done, especially through our barometer that show how serious of a problem this is. Oftentimes, I find the supplier base understands more what's happening in the market than anybody else, because they're getting it across the board from a lot of different inputs. So making sure that is understood so we all have a good view of okay, it didn't go as planned. Okay, let's deal with that. Let's work through that. There's a lot of discussions happening between suppliers and customers about how to handle that financially, but also, okay, what is going to be the path forward? Those are the kinds of things that we talk about and we work on through our events and our councils and a lot of the behind the scenes work. A lot of the times, you know, we spend time on the phone with our members, just talking through this. And people don't see that, you know, sometimes we just play therapist and that's some of our job to gather that, but then we can use that to help generate the content and understand how to guide and talk to some of the other leaders that don't get all of that well rounded voice of the industry that we sometimes get in the position we're in.

[00:11:46] Tharunika Vasudevan: Hi, my name is Tharunika Vasudevan and I'm pursuing a double major in Global Supply Chain Management and Finance at Wayne State University, Mike Ilitch School of Business. It's been a really cool experience. It's been really great to hear about the transitions to go from ICE to various forms of EV and the efforts to optimize them to its full potential with respect to price and the environment and other challenges. Supply chain is such a broad field. It really pays attention to a different forms of your strengths and weaknesses, too. You can really go in whichever direction. It's one that you study, you really know the backbone of business and the industry itself. So, it's such a cool experience. Any field of supply chain you go into, you know.

[00:12:36] Andrew Nodge: Hi, my name is Andrew Nodge. I am a student at Wayne State in the Mike Ilitch School of Business studying Global Supply Chain Management.

[00:12:44] Jan Griffiths: And what has been your experience here at CAR? What have you really liked about CAR?

[00:12:49] Andrew Nodge: This experience is absolutely amazing. The thing that resonated with me the most was honestly learning how policies and regulations can affect the automotive industry. How the election also has an effect on it because I personally never knew how much of the impact it actually truly does have.

[00:13:07] Carl Anthony: Andrew, what made you want to study supply chain and what made you want to focus on automotive?

[00:13:13] Andrew Nodge: Supply chain is just so broad. I can do it with so many industries as well as the fact that Wayne State has an absolutely amazing program and the professors are just top notch. Best example I can say is my professor, John Taylor. He wants you to succeed.

[00:13:31] Liuyan He: Hi, my name is Liuyan He. I go to Wayne State University. I'm a senior double majoring in technology information system, analytics, and global supply chain management.

[00:13:43] Jan Griffiths: What has resonated with you the most so far?

[00:13:46] Liuyan He: I think it will be the autonomy driving. So, moving forward right now, we are going into L3, L4, which is a little bit more how we're going to self driving. And especially of today's event, we learned there's not just presidential vehicle, there's also a commercial vehicle as well. And in the future, we will have aircraft as well. This is incredible and open eyes for everybody.

[00:14:13] Carl Anthony: What draws you to autonomous vehicles? Why the interest there?

[00:14:18] Liuyan He: First of all, I recently finished my internship at Ford Motor Company as supply chain purchasing in which I focused on data analytics. So, you know, nowadays, we have all the data driving to move our company forward. And as well as there is so much software in the background and how we use those software to accomplish in the end to result in autonomy driving. And, you know, that is our direction and that is our trend to do it, not just within Ford and as well as for other automotive. So I think there is a big future in this area.

[00:14:56] Carl Anthony: At the end of the day, on Tuesday, August 6, Bob Lee, Corporate Executive Vice President and Head of North America for LG Energy Solution, gave a keynote about the global EV market. After the presentation, Jan and I asked Bob about one of his slides related to EVs and their carbon footprint.

[00:15:15] Bob Lee: If you think about carbon footprint for a vehicle, you have to look at how much it costs, in terms of carbon to produce the vehicle, produce the batteries, and then finally, how much carbon you release during the use of the vehicle. When you look at electric vehicles, because you have to produce batteries, the initial carbon footprint at the beginning of the vehicle starts off higher than an internal combustion engine. But because you have a zero emission vehicle product over the life of the vehicle, you use far less carbon or energy than an internal combustion engine vehicle. In the United States, based on the emission controls and the type of fossil fuels we use, roughly a third of the total carbon footprint if you look at the full lifetime of the vehicle.

[00:16:02] Carl Anthony: Jan and I also asked about the number of charging locations in the United States. As Bob said during his keynote, there's more than you might expect.

[00:16:10] Bob Lee: In the US, we already have 50 to 60,000 public charging locations. If you include private charging locations, which is your home, it's actually far more than that. But there are about 13,500 McDonald's in the US, so my point was that we already have four or five times the number of charging locations already, and over the next six or seven years, we expect that number to increase by tenfold. So, of course, you know, there is more that we can do on the charging infrastructure. And we need to educate people on where they are so they can find it easily, but that infrastructure is already somewhat in place and it is definitely coming over the next seven or eight years. We're here at the Grand Traverse Resort for CAR MBS 2024.

[00:17:03] Carl Anthony: Today is Wednesday, August 7th. And it's the second day of our CAR MBS 2024 Unplugged broadcast. We've just heard from a strong group of thought leaders, including students from Wayne State.

[00:17:14] Jan Griffiths: I'm all about Wayne State, Carl. You know, my background is in supply chain and I'm on the advisory board for supply chain for Wayne State. So, I have a bit of a special affinity. But what really impressed me yesterday was when we talked to the students about what they liked about the conference, it wasn't some just pithy little answer about, oh, it was great. It's great to be here. I mean, the answers were well thought out. They were deep. They are really paying attention, learning and absorbing everything around them. And that gives me great hope for our future, Carl.

[00:17:46] Carl Anthony: It's really cool to see because somebody has to take over after us. This is the next generation.

[00:17:54] Jan Griffiths: And at CAR MBS today, we're going to hear from, and we are going to interview some people who are shaping the academic agenda for the students. I'm very excited to hear that today.

[00:18:08] Carl Anthony: In this next round of interviews, we'll hear from industry and mobility thought leaders, including representatives from Michigan State University and Kettering University. Let's welcome our second group of guests to CAR MBS 2024 Unplugged.

[00:18:22] Jan Griffiths: We are here today with Judd herzer. Judd is the mobility director at Michigan State University and he is here today at day two at CAR to talk about aligning the Road Ahead: Workforce Development and the Evolving Auto Industry. Jed, welcome to the show.

[00:18:39] Judd Herzer: Thank you, Jan. I'm happy to be here.

[00:18:41] Jan Griffiths: What on earth does a mobility director do at

Michigan State?

[00:18:45] Judd Herzer: That's a great question. I oversee the university's research portfolio, talent development, and deployment of mobility technologies, as well as the management of our infrastructure systems on campus to do testing and evaluations of new mobility products and services.

[00:19:02] Jan Griffiths: If you had to summarize in one sentence, what is needed for talent development?

[00:19:09] Judd Herzer: I would say the number one thing is more experiential learning opportunities. This is our biggest tool in the post secondary toolbox for getting students to understand how that classroom knowledge that they're learning at MSU is applied in a real world setting, but it also helps us achieve the mission of the university which, as a land grant university, to reach students where they are, give them the opportunity to translate the classroom knowledge into real world experience that they are comfortable with, that they are experienced with, that they have a background in, that really helps them understand and truly digest the classroom, the book knowledge that they're getting at MSU.

[00:19:58] Carl Anthony: Judd, we're talking about those experiential learning opportunities and the talent development pipeline. Are there any bottlenecks in that right now that collectively as an industry that we could all help address to maybe create some efficiencies there so students can get that first hand knowledge maybe quicker or more efficiently?

[00:20:19] Judd Herzer: Yeah, there are and there's one in particular that I believe MSU is finally cracking the nut on, so to speak. And that is just in the offering of coursework that is perhaps slow to respond to industry's needs or can be slow to respond to industry's needs. Because there's a pretty long and sometimes arduous process of putting together new degree programs and getting those approved and offering them to students, it can be a multi-year process. We are, at MSU, going to be offering a new Bachelors of Science Technology Engineering program, or Tech-E program that will allow us to be a lot more agile. It's a multi disciplined engineering degree that teaches the students core competencies in their first couple of years of undergraduate and allows them to kind of choose your own adventure, so to speak, and the elective curriculum and where they're really concentrating their academic studies. We're going to start off with two concentrations, but would have the ability to add new ones or expand or change the coursework within concentrations at a department level within the university. Rather than having to change or adapt an entire program, we can just change it at the concentration level, which allows us to speed up that timeline. We can do that in less than a year. And once the new concentrations are being offered, we can get students graduating out of the programs with those concentrations in two years rather than four years to put up an entirely new program and then offering that to new incoming freshmen and having another four years for them to graduate out of the program. I mean, we're talking a two year, three and a half, excuse me, two and a half year process versus an eight year process.

[00:22:18] Jan Griffiths: And today we have Pamposh Zutshi joining us. He is the vice president of product strategy and planning at WiTricity. Pompush, welcome to the show.

[00:22:29] Pamposh Zutshi: Thank you for having me.

[00:22:31] Jan Griffiths: What is WiTricity?

[00:22:33] Pamposh Zutshi: Well, think about it this way. If you think of wireless and electricity, mash it together, it's WiTricity.

[00:22:39] Carl Anthony: Oh, that's cool.

[00:22:40] Jan Griffiths: That's what it is.

[00:22:41] Carl Anthony: That's cool.

[00:22:42] Pamposh Zutshi: And the reason for that is we're in the business of wireless charging for EVs of all kinds.

[00:22:49] Jan Griffiths: Your panel is all about, from obstacles to opportunity, navigating the landscape of EV charging infrastructure. What is the biggest obstacle in your mind and how do we overcome it?

[00:23:01] Pamposh Zutshi: Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is, historically, what we've tried to do is to replicate the gas station model. So, everybody wants to charge their EV in the three minutes that you spend at a gas station. Now, the beauty about electricity is that it's not oil. It comes to your home. And, you know, speaker after speaker, over the past couple of days, mentioned that, you know, anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of charging happens at home. I think that's one reality that more people need to understand that, you know, most of the time you can charge at home. If you think about it this way, the typical American driver drives fewer than 50 miles a day. For the few days a year that you exceed the range of your EV, other than those few days, wireless charging, for instance, would make it thought free, mind free. You never have to think about wireless charging again until you decide to go beyond the range of your EV. So, I think, a combination of education and then solving for the right future model of charging is I think what we need.

[00:24:11] Carl Anthony: This CAR MBS 2024 Unplugged podcast is about soundbites. And when we came in here and we got set up, you said, Carl, Jan, I have some specific soundbites for you. Let's hear those soundbites, my friend.

[00:24:27] Pamposh Zutshi: Well, whatever can go wireless does go wireless.

[00:24:32] Carl Anthony: I like that.

[00:24:32] Pamposh Zutshi: And the examples I've given of that is, you know, if you remember, we used to have big cables for internet connections. Before that we had phones with cords. Before that we had TV channel changers that you had to get up and actually change channels. So, I think the conclusion of that is whatever can go wireless generally does go wireless.

[00:24:52] Jan Griffiths: And we welcome Stefan Buerkle, regional president, cross-domain computing solutions of Bosch North America. Stefan, welcome to the show.

[00:25:00] Stefan Buerkle: Thanks for having me.

[00:25:01] Jan Griffiths: Stefan, you are on a panel and it is called the Software Symphony. Can automakers and tech giants orchestrate a collaborative future? Simple question. Can they?

[00:25:14] Stefan Buerkle: Ultimately, yes.

[00:25:16] Jan Griffiths: How?

[00:25:16] Stefan Buerkle: I think there's a huge learning curve right now. I mean, all major OEMs are heading towards a software defined vehicle in different form and shapes. As we do that the first time as an overall industry, there's a lot of learning to find where is the sweet spot between what do I do in-house, what do I give outside, where do I need standardization, where do I need specialization, where can I differentiate myself versus what is more a commodity or an enabler, which I need to share to gain efficiency. So, currently we see a heavy trend towards specialization. I do a lot in-house, I define everything myself, specific hardware, but that drives the cost up. And we saw in the past that specialization is not ultimately the best solution, especially from a cost perspective.

[00:26:04] Carl Anthony: When it comes to the promise of software defined cars in terms of what they can enable for features for consumers, and I suppose the sky could be the limit. Why is it important that we try to tap into those consumers? Why is it important that we offer more services or an increased number of services like this to consumers?

[00:26:27] Stefan Buerkle: It is because this is where you really can differentiate yourself as an OEM, as a brand, as a certain car line or trim level. You said the sky is the limit, let's say the sky is the cloud.

[00:26:37] Carl Anthony: Sure, sure.

[00:26:39] Stefan Buerkle: Everything becomes connected in your whole life. Not only the car, but your house, your smartphone, any ways, and so on, and so on. But what we didn't achieve yet is to tie those things really together. Let me give you a very simple example. How many of us have some sort of smart home security, a cam or a ring doorbell or the likes? Everybody drives up to our house and we every time get a beautiful video of ourselves driving into our garage. As simple as that. Why? Just because the car isn't connected with the other side. It's a very simple use case, but a total unnecessary. Easy to fix once you have everything connected in the cloud, you just have to link the information together. And those companies who succeed to bring data life that is where you now can differentiate yourself.

[00:27:25] Jan Griffiths: Our next guest is Joe McCabe. Joe is the president and CEO of Auto Forecast Solutions, and there is nobody better in this industry to talk about what the future holds than Joe. Joe, welcome to the show.

[00:27:37] Joe McCabe: Thank you. Pleasure.

[00:27:38] Jan Griffiths: Three things. Tell us three things that people need to know about the forecast, what's happening in this industry as we move from ICE to BEV.

[00:27:48] Joe McCabe: Yeah, three things. That's a good one. The BEV adoption curve is not in line with what government and environmentalists want to drive. It needs to be a consumer agenda, and we're finally hearing the vehicle manufacturers agree to those terms. The fact that we're going to have a rocky road ahead, peaks and valleys, a lot of competition coming in this space, and we've got to find the right sweet spot. The way to do it is to find a balanced portfolio that every vehicle manufacturer has. So, yes, they need a BEV, but yes, they need plug in hybrids and standard hybrids and ICE because the death of the internal combustion engine is not going to happen in our lifetime. You know, we have to look at these companies and understand their profit centers and they have shareholders to respond to and they have to make money in the same time. So, you know, we'll get you to about a 28 percent of sales in the US by '31 to be a full BEV. But that means there's also some other hybridization there as well, but it's not the only solution. It's a solution to a balanced portfolio. If I had to pick on number two, China seems to be the big topic of the day, pushing into markets like Europe and North America, players like BYD have mentioned their intentions to put a plant in Mexico in late '26. they've also mentioned their intentions to sell in Canada, very soon. And they're going to bring a very respectable, very high value and affordable product, even with 100 plus tariffs applied, because their goal is market share, not profitability. A lot of the current manufacturers have shown that profitability is second, right? They'll eventually get there, as long as they get there over time. And I think the Chinese are going to be the ones that are going to, you know, play by that script and say, 'We want in.' Third, it's not business as usual, in North America, even post-COVID. There was always an idea that once you get through some sort of major downturn in the industry, whether it's a recession or a war or COVID, whatever it is, and you all of a sudden you get back to status quo and the status quo is, you know, more manufacturers offering more product, the same consumer that's discerning. And it makes it difficult for legacy manufacturers to compete against new players that don't necessarily need a dealership network or have one or two key products, don't have dozens, multiple brands and dozens of nameplates to satisfy. So, the playing field is not level going forward. And everyone's got to sort of adapt to those terms.

[00:30:08] Jan Griffiths: Our next guest is Bob McMahan, president of Kettering University. We know Kettering in this industry, don't we? It is one of the primary sources for the talent in this industry. Bob, welcome to the show.

[00:30:23] Dr. Robert K. McMahan: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

[00:30:24] Jan Griffiths: Do we need to change the way we view talent and talent acquisition in this industry?

[00:30:30] Dr. Robert K. McMahan: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we're using a 50 to 100 year old talent development model for a 21st century industry. If you survey leaders of the industry, I don't care, the majors, the suppliers, whoever. And you ask them the single thing that is gating their ability to grow, their ability to build their business to do what they want to do; it's talent, it's always talent. And yet, talent is the only thing that we treat as a hunting gathering problem. We wait to see what comes out the pipe and then we fight and we steal it from other people and we bring it and we lament this group taking it from us and whatever. You've got to have a different approach to talent because the need is longterm. We know it's there. We know it exists, we know it endures, we just need to address it like we address any other supply chain problem.

[00:31:25] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, and I see the same type of perspective can be applied to diversity in this industry. So often, I will talk to CEOs and we'll talk about whether or not they have a diverse candidate in a position, in a senior level role. They say, well, you know, I tried, but nobody applied. That's not the right question. The question is, what are you doing early on in the process to develop it, right?

[00:31:49] Dr. Robert K. McMahan: You have to build it. Absolutely. And so, what we find when we look at studies, and NSF has done a series of studies on this, when you look at the decision making process for potential students or potential engineers and scientists, what we find is, most of the time, these students are making choices early in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade that are pulling them out of the chain. And so, they, you know, they have a class where, you know, the teacher says math is hard or they're frustrated and they don't have the support systems at home or in their environment to help them through that challenge. And they withdraw. So, they're making choices, but they're making choices in the negative, not in the affirmative. That is constraining the supply. It's probably true that once you get to the end of the pipeline, the opportunities are there, but it's just getting them there. And that's something we're all going to have to collectively work to address because it's not just the universities aren't producing enough or the community colleges aren't producing enough. Because they take what comes before them, and they can only develop the talent that's there.

[00:32:58] Carl Anthony: When I was a kid, I was into Hot Wheels cars and then AM radio and FM radio, I had a Walkman. That was my first exposure to cars and to audio, to radio. You mentioned that when they get of a certain age in school, they make decisions and then it puts them out of the field. How do we make sure that they have something, whatever that is, a Hot Wheels car or in my case it was a Sony Walkman. How do we make sure that kids have those things to keep them inspired? And to keep them in the classroom and then ultimately in the automotive industry.

[00:33:32] Dr. Robert K. McMahan: Well, that's the, what is it? The 64 million question or whatever. That's the question, right? That's where we all have to work together. We as an institution, for example, we spend an enormous amount of energy working with elementary school students and secondary school students in robotics programs and drone programs and all sorts of programs to really use technology to inspire. If we don't make those investments in the sixth and the seventh grade students, we're not going to see those students. And so those investments we all have to make them. And we have to, I think the opportunity perhaps here is to make them in a coordinated way that we're not making them now.

[00:34:16] Jan Griffiths: Our next guest is Kevin Gilleo. Kevin is vice president of electronic systems at Toyota Motor North America, and he is fresh off the stage talking about how automakers and tech giants can orchestrate a collaborative future. Kevin, welcome to the show.

[00:34:34] Kevin Gilleo: Thank you. Glad to be here.

[00:34:36] Carl Anthony: And Kevin, a big part of that discussion was around Software Defined Vehicles. Let's define Software Defined Vehicles. What is a software defined vehicle?

[00:34:48] Kevin Gilleo: Well, first off, there's a lot of different definitions out there for Software Defined Vehicles, but I want to talk today about how I define them. I say that Software Defined Vehicles are vehicles that are primarily controlled by software for operations, can add value, and deploy new functions that enhance the customer's experience through timely software updates throughout the lifecycle of the vehicle. So it's important to understand customer expectations. Customers are defining their expectations. They're not just the vehicle that they drove 20 years ago. Now, they have a personal device such as a cell phone where they're understanding the customer or they're understanding the unique experience. They have different smart home features that they have and they're bringing those expectations or there's higher level of expectations to their vehicle and they want to have that same experience with them.

[00:35:34] Jan Griffiths: Education is a big theme that we see running through the transformation from ICE to BEV in this industry right now and it's education at all levels. But when you think about a company like Toyota, a large OEM, how on earth do you do that? How do you educate people?

[00:35:52] Kevin Gilleo: It's interesting because when you talk about leading people, or you talk about building on the culture and framework that we have for our company, we're a very good manufacturing company. We're a very good vehicle development company. But now, we introduce software. We introduce Software Defined Vehicles. How can I continue to find the experts within our organization to understand, or outside our organization, and then help to educate the team, my peers, and our executives globally on what that should be, and especially what it means in each region, such as North America.

[00:36:24] Carl Anthony: Jan, we're here at the Grand Traverse resort for CAR MBS 2024 about to put a bow on our unplugged podcast. An exciting week. What are your thoughts?

[00:36:34] Jan Griffiths: Well, you know, Carl, in the automotive industry, we love to look at the numbers and the data.

[00:36:39] Carl Anthony: Yes, we do.

[00:36:39] Jan Griffiths: And the data says that the registrations this year were north of 600 and attendance was definitely north of 500, which is quite an increase over last year. And there are a few questions that I think are on everybody's minds and, you know, this is unplugged. So, we like to ask the questions that we know people are thinking about and often don't want to ask.

[00:37:02] Carl Anthony: Right.

[00:37:02] Jan Griffiths: And that is, first of all, what is the future of this conference? And secondly, where are the big OEM speakers? Those are two questions that have been coming up time and time again over the last couple of years. And I think CAR MBS nailed it this year, quite frankly. I mean, you want to talk about OEM speaker? Mark Ruess does it get any better than that? Joe Hinrichs. And then we had Bob Lee from LG Energy. I mean, we had big name speakers here today. Great organization. I feel like CAR is really dialing in their vision for this conference. The vibe, the personality of this conference, the energy that was here. I think CAR MBS is back. It's been great interviewing our speakers, getting the voices, getting the key points on this podcast and sharing it with everybody and doing it in record time.

[00:37:59] Carl Anthony: We've been here at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City, Michigan for the 59th Annual Management Briefing Seminars presented at the Center for Automotive Research or CAR MBS for short. Thank you to our guests, to Mark Garrison and Alan Amici and the entire CAR team and the staff here at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa. For Jan Griffiths and Carl Anthony, this has been CAR MBS 2024 Unplugged.

[00:38:24] Jan Griffiths: Thank you for listening to the Automotive Leaders Podcast. Click the listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice, and don't forget to download the 21 Traits of Authentic Leadership PDF by clicking on the link below. And remember, stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership.