Detroit’s Disappointed Dreamers Go West

Someone reminded me last week that Larry Burns, former corporate vice president of research and development for General Motors, is an advisor to Google. This reminder followed reports the week before that Apple had hired former Chrysler quality chief, Doug Betts, and the report, last year, that Apple had hired the head of Daimler’s Silicon Valley research office.

The reality is that if you live and work in the auto industry today you know multiple executives, men and women, that have gotten fed up with the monolithic auto industry culture with layers of bureaucracy and inter-divisional in-fighting and chosen to take their skills to the West Coast where generous job offers beckon. This is not to say this is a one-way flow. But I write these words to highlight the appeal of starting fresh in an environment where new thinking is welcomed and effort rewarded.

This isn’t to suggest that all is rosy for those who have taken the plunge. The cost of living in Silicon Valley is prohibitive and a major barrier to overcome for any migrating executive, young or old. And the corporate cultures of Google and Apple have their own challenging downsides which, as I say, has sent some transplants straight back to their homes.

But the powerful elixir of wealthy employers eager to learn about the inner workings of the automotive industry they are in the process of disrupting is hard to ignore. Apple and Google today are Statue-of-Liberty-like beacons to Detroit’s disaffected denizens – give us your poor, your ignored, your fired, your forgotten… “yearning to breathe free.”

But it was the reminder that Larry Burns - co-athor of “Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century” and a former member of GM’s Automotive Strategy Board and Automotive Product Board - was advising Google that caught me up. Burns was behind the EnV – a two-seat wonder car created initially in cooperation with Segway and intended for autonomous operation.

What is perhaps so notable about the EnV, which has been developed in three different versions and is still in testing, is the fact that if had been developed by Apple or Google the degree of attention the vehicle would have received would have been entirely different. While almost anyone with even a casual interest in the automotive industry is aware of and could spot the so-called and pod-like “Google car,” hardly anyone would know what an EnV was if they saw it.  (Indications are that GM is incubating the EnV in China - so maybe the direction to look for innovation is actually East.)

In this way, Silicon Valley not only offers the potential to make automotive dreams come true, it also offers the prospect of having those dreams realized on a more prominent stage. Google and Apple are adept at overcoming the attention-getting deficit disorder that sometimes plagues Detroit.

I am not completely sure why this is. It may have something to do with the fact that the auto industry’s bread and butter still consists of gas guzzling SUV’s, pickup trucks, luxury cars and crossovers. When those vehicles are paying your bills, it’s hard to sacrifice even a portion of the limelight for your teams that are working on alternative fuel technologies and autonomous pods.

Burns co-authored “Reinventing the Automobile” five years ago in cooperation with William J. Mitchell, the former Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr., Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences and director of the Smart Cities research group at MIT’s Media Lab, and Christopher Borroni-Bird, GM’s former director of advanced technology vehicle concepts and currently a vice president of strategic development at Qualcomm. Mitchell passed away in 2010.

Burns' role as a Google advisor is just one of his many ongoing post-GM activities, but his presence on the Silicon Valley scene reminded me of a potentially lethal brain drain confronting Detroit. A major challenge for the city and the industry is attracting and retaining the brightest minds in transportation.

There is an even greater concern, though, in the pull to the West on any and all expertise focused on the security and information technology required to enable connected and autonomous vehicles. I thoroughly enjoyed the now amazingly five-year-old “Reinventing the Automobile” when I first read it. Its relevance endures, as does Larry’s.

Of course, on a cautionary note, Larry has been a powerful advocate for hydrogen fuel cell technology for mass transportation – a source of strong conflicting opinions in the industry. Here is his TED talk on the topic from 2005: https://www.ted.com/talks/reinventing_the_car

The reality is there is little truly new in the automotive industry. Almost everything that can be done with 2, 3 or 4 wheels to move people has been tested or prototyped decades ago. But the Googles and Apples of the world have the potential to poke through the dustbin of rejected ideas and select the one or two they want to pull out and take for a spin.

To listen to Burns’ TED talk of 2005 is to hear the combined innovations of Tesla, Google and Apple all coming from a former GM vice president. BMW may be anticipating the next step with rumors spreading in the industry of an Apple-BMW alliance around the creation of an Apple-enhanced i3 electric vehicle. While the i3 with its carbon fibre componentry and body, and electric powertrain, has been well received by consumers, a partnership with Apple could radically stimulate consumer interest. One has to wonder how consumers might respond to an Apple-badged Nissan Leaf.

The auto industry must not only innovate on technology it must innovate on culture and employee retention to compete. And finally, the industry must innovate on priorities to better highlight emerging powertrain and safety technologies even while continuing to deliver safe and reliable every-day transportation for today’s consumers.  BMW may be pointing the way to a more collaborative path to market - or maybe that's what Larry Burns is up to.