Sustainable and Affordable Mobility for All: Putting the Heart Back into Technology

Borroni-Bird, Christopher: - Dr. Christopher Borroni-Bird is an expert on sustainable and affordable mobility for ALL the world's people. This builds on his 25-year career leading advanced mobility initiatives at several major companies and universities as well as volunteering in sub-Saharan Africa.

With his consulting business, Afreecar, he is a senior advisor on future mobility to McKinsey and EVage (an Indian commercial EV startup) and is also sought out to provide independent technical due diligence on future mobility technologies and companies in vehicle autonomy, connectivity and electrification. Separately, Afreecar is also developing an e-kit that power assists non-motorized vehicles while also transforming them into mobile power sources, which has many applications in both the developing and developed worlds. He served as Waymo's Chief Engineer for Future Vehicle Programs and has been a Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab. From 2012 to 2017, he was Qualcomm's VP of Strategic Development, responsible for wireless automotive solutions. Prior to this, he led GM's Electric Networked Vehicle (EN-V), the world's first drivable vehicles to demonstrate today's accepted vision of future mobility (and extensively deployed at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo). He led GM's Autonomy, Hy-wire, and Sequel skateboard electric vehicle concepts, now widely adopted by the Auto Industry, and has 50 patents. He is co-author of Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, with Larry Burns and the late Bill Mitchell (MIT Press, 2010). Before joining GM in 2000, he led Chrysler's gasoline fuel cell vehicle development. He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame as a Young Leader in 2000, was one of Automotive News' inaugural Electrifying 100 in 2011, and was profiled by Motor Trend/Blackberry in the Coding the Car documentary and book series in 2023.