A former Volvo designer revived the brand’s lost wagon as a concept.
The V77 and XC77 wear a three-door aerodynamic shooting brake body.
Bauhaus thinking and Dieter Rams shape the studies’ clean surfacing.
Volvo’s current lineup leans hard on SUVs, but the brand built its reputation on wagons, and there’s reason to believe it hasn’t given up on them. Neither has at least one of the people who used to design its cars. A former Volvo designer set out to bring the old formula back with a pair of digital concepts, the V77 and XC77, each built around a mix of minimalism and sustainability.
The man behind them is Julien Fesquet, a Los Angeles-based professional designer currently working for Slate Auto. His resume reads like a grand tour of the industry, with stops at Volvo, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, and Ferrari.
The V77 and XC77 are a personal project, drawing on Bauhaus principles and the work of Dieter Rams, the industrial designer whose thinking eventually shaped the look of Apple products. Both wear a three-door shooting brake body with a low nose and an aerodynamic roofline. Staying true to Volvo’s playbook, the V77 is built for the road while the XC77 adds crossover cues and a lifted stance.
Illustrations: Julien Fesquet
Beyond the compact footprint and genuinely handsome proportions, the concepts trade in clean surfacing and restraint. The low-mounted headlights fade into a covered grille via a digital gradient, and the Volvo emblem has been pared down to a single horizontal line.
The profile is distinguished by large alloy wheels, supercar-style creases on the front fenders, a flat beltline, and a bi-tone livery with a darker finish for the lower bodywork. The rear section is even more striking, with a glass tailgate surrounded by ultra-slim LEDs. The designer also placed emphasis on the Color, Materials, and Finish (CMF) strategy, proposing the use of recycled materials and an unpainted body for the V77.
Inside, we find two rows of seats and a rather large boot. The V77 adopts a Cream Yellow interior theme inspired by the Volvo 850 T-5R, while the XC77 gets an Orange interior that complements its earthy brown exterior panels.
Illustrations: Julien Fesquet
Fesquet didn’t list any specs, but the absence of cooling vents and tailpipes suggests the digital concepts were envisioned with a fully electric powertrain.
Fesquet told CarScoops: “Volvo is a brand with iconic station wagon, very minimal functional boxy designs in the past. It still has beautiful cars, but it tends to be oriented to more traditional automotive design. I thought it would be interesting to break the modern Volvo codes and imagine what it could look like if it was still a more minimal, functional, and industrial design. Something modern, sophisticated yet boxy, but without forgetting the need of aerodynamic performance. This led to this shooting brake silhouette with a low nose, sleek roof and low ground clearance.”
What About Real Volvo Wagons?
Volvo has recently wound down production of the aging V60 and V90, along with the adventurous XC60 and XC90. Even so, wagon fans aren’t completely out of luck.
Chief technology officer Anders Bell has said the new SPA3 architecture, which debuted underneath the EX60 SUV, can support a range of bodystyles, low-slung models included. Volvo hasn’t confirmed any wagon yet, so the question comes down to whether demand will be there to justify the spend. For now, we wait.
Many social media users compared the Luce to the Nissan Leaf.
Mazda fired back with a photo of its original 1960s Luce.
Ferrari’s former boss says the design is beyond even copying.
The new, all-electric Ferrari Luce has spent the past week since its launch as the internet’s favorite target. Keyboard critics have torn into the styling, AI renders have circulated to demonstrate how trivially the design could be fixed, and even the share price took a brief tumble.
Not even Toblerone could help itself in poking fun at Ferrari. Heck, even Ferrari’s legendary former boss, Luca di Montezemolo, suggested the Luce is so horrible that not even the Chinese would dare copy it. Both Mazda and Nissan have since jumped on the bandwagon, having their say on the controversial EV.
Mazda came first, simply posting a photo of the original Mazda Luce SS that it introduced back in the 1960s. It appears Ferrari quietly snagged the international trademark for Luce earlier this year after Mazda let it lapse. While the Japanese brand can no longer use the name, there’s no denying the original Luce looks much better than the new Ferrari. The top comment? “Mazda making fun of Ferrari before GTA6,” with more than 4,500 likes.
Soon after, Nissan Ireland jumped onto Instagram. Immediately after the Luce was unveiled, some online pundits began comparing it to the new Nissan Leaf, posting side-by-side photos of the two.
Nissan re-posted one of these images, showing the side profile of the Leaf compared to the Luce, writing “We admit, we’re flattered,” and adding “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so thank you Ferrari.”
The most obvious similarity between the duo is the two-tone black-and-blue paint schemes they were presented in. You could also argue that the rear hatch of the Luce is similar to the Leaf, as are the black rocker panels, but in general, we don’t think the Luce and Leaf look that much alike. Nevertheless, Nissan Ireland took down the post shortly after it was shared, perhaps because the social media intern received a call from their boss.
Perhaps the funniest meme we’ve seen of the Ferrari Luce is an AI rendering comparing it to an Apple computer mouse. But if the Luce somehow sells well, Ferrari could end up getting the last laugh.
Ex-GLM employees gave the second-gen Tommykaira ZZ a facelift.
The street-legal model features a redesigned nose with slim LEDs.
It retains the stock underpinnings and 305 hp electric powertrain.
The Tommykaira ZZ is a rare Japanese sports car that has been discontinued since 2021, but that didn’t stop a designer and an engineer who used to work in its parent company from giving it a facelift. The result is the Number Nine Works Sweep 9, a street-legal one-off build with an interesting backstory.
The project is the fruit of collaboration between automotive designer Ryuhei Ishimaru and engineer Yuji Fujitsuka who was responsible for the development of the second-gen Tommykaira ZZ. Both used to work for GLM, which was the brand behind the second-gen Tommykaira. However, they have since moved on starting their own companies, the independent design studio Fortmarei and the engineering firm Number 9 Works.
The two men got together this year, bringing the discontinued Tommykaira ZZ into the present with a styling refresh. The goal was to redesign the front cowl with factory-grade quality, while preserving the rear section and the original livery. They also wanted the resulting vehicle to be fully compliant with Japanese safety regulations, adding another layer of complexity into the project.
The highlight of the Number Nine Works Sweep 9 is the ultra-slim LED headlights with an elongated shape that look much sleeker than the original units. These are combined with extra LEDs on the bumper that has received a cleaner design without any intakes.
The grille-less nose and the sculpted front fenders blend nicely with the carry-over bodywork on the profile. Still, it would be nice to see a similar redesign of the rear end that retains the Lotus-sourced quad round taillights.
The whole build was realised by the engineer, the designer, and a few skilled craftsmen. More importantly, it is a fully functional model with Japanese license plates that can be driven on public roads.
Predictably, the Number Nine Works Sweep 9 doesn’t have any performance or chassis upgrades over the donor vehicle.
Unlike the original Tommykaira ZZ from the ’90s that was powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, the second generation that debuted in 2014 has a fully electric powertrain. The sports car is based on a tub-style chassis with a single electric motor producing 305 hp (227 kW / 309 PS) and 415 Nm (306 lb-ft) of torque.
The team doesn’t plan on applying the same treatment to more examples of the model, although we can easily see why owners of the second-gen Tommykaira ZZ would want to approach them. In any case, this project proves that focused styling tweaks can make a big difference in the aura of a vehicle.
Designer Ryuhei Ishimaru told CarScoops: “Number Nine Works Sweep 9 is a 2026 street-legal technology demonstrator built on the Tommykaira ZZ EV platform, balancing strict safety compliance with its original design language. It is a very personal “moment of truth” for me, as it’s a collaboration with the original engineer after 10 years.”
Luca di Montezemolo says the Luce shouldn’t have the Prancing Horse badge.
Ferrari’s former boss says the Luce risks destroying the fabled Italian brand.
Italy’s deputy Prime Minister has also fiercely criticized the all-electric Ferrari.
Some car launches court controversy by accident. The Luce did it on purpose, and the man who ran Ferrari for two decades is not amused. Back in February, iPhone designer Jony Ive warned us the all-electric Ferrari Luce would be controversial. Even he likely did not anticipate how sharply the market would turn on the exterior design.
Just a few months ago, pundits were praising the interior of the Luce, which ditches the over-reliance on touch-sensitive controls found in other Ferraris in favor of physical buttons, switches, and toggles. But while LoveFrom, the design agency run by Ive that penned the Luce, nailed the cabin, the same cannot be said for the exterior. Even former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo, who served as Chairman and CEO from 1991 to 2014, is not a fan.
Shortly after Ferrari pulled the wraps off the Luce, di Montezemolo gave Italian publication Askanews his unvarnished take. In his view, this is the rare Ferrari even the Chinese will not bother to copy.
“If I had to say what I really think, I would be hurting Ferrari,” he said. “We’re risking the destruction of a legend, and I’m very sorry about that. I hope they at least remove the Prancing Horse from that car. This is surely a car that at least the Chinese won’t copy from us.”
It’s not just di Montezemolo who appears shocked by the new Luce. Even Italy’s deputy prime minister and transport minister, Matteo Salvini, expressed his feelings on X.
“It looks nothing like a (Ferrari),” he wrote. “Is this supposed to be ‘innovation’? Who knows what Enzo Ferrari would say.”
Elettrica, costosissima (550 mila euro!) e, dal punto di vista estetico, si commenta da sola… Sembra tutto fuorché un'auto del Cavallino. E questa sarebbe “innovazione”? Chissà Enzo Ferrari cosa direbbe… pic.twitter.com/zITSlz1a9j
Shortly after Ferrari lifted the covers on the Luce, shares in the brand dropped 8.4 percent in Italy and 5.1 percent in the US. Ferrari has been open about its ambitions for the Luce to attract a new generation of wealthy buyers, particularly those who are environmentally focused, but whether or not it’ll even appeal to them remains to be seen.
Luca di Montezemolo says the Luce shouldn’t have the Prancing Horse badge.
Ferrari’s former boss says the Luce risks destroying the fabled Italian brand.
Italy’s deputy Prime Minister has also fiercely criticized the all-electric Ferrari.
In February, iPhone designer Jony Ive warned us that the all-electric Ferrari Luce would be controversial, but not even he would have predicted the market’s initial response to the car and its exterior design.
Just a few months ago, pundits praised the interior of the Luce, which eschews the over-reliance on touch-sensitive controls of other Ferrari models in favor of physical buttons, switches, and toggles. But while LoveFrom, the design agency run by Ive that designed the Luce, nailed the car’s interior, the same can’t be said about the exterior. Not even former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo likes the car.
Shortly after Ferrari lifted the veil on the Luce, di Montezemolo briefly spoke with Italian publication Askanews about it. According to him, it’s the type of vehicle that not even the Chinese will be willing to copy.
“If I had to say what I really think, I would be hurting Ferrari,” he said. “We’re risking the destruction of a legend, and I’m very sorry about that. I hope they at least remove the Prancing Horse from that car. This is surely a car that at least the Chinese won’t copy from us.”
It’s not just di Montezemolo who appears shocked by the new Luce. Even Italy’s deputy prime minister and transport minister, Matteo Salvini, expressed his feelings on X.
“It looks nothing like a (Ferrari),” he wrote. “Is this supposed to be ‘innovation’? Who knows what Enzo Ferrari would say.”
Elettrica, costosissima (550 mila euro!) e, dal punto di vista estetico, si commenta da sola… Sembra tutto fuorché un'auto del Cavallino. E questa sarebbe “innovazione”? Chissà Enzo Ferrari cosa direbbe… pic.twitter.com/zITSlz1a9j
Shortly after Ferrari lifted the covers on the Luce, shares in the brand dropped 8.4 percent in Italy and 5.1 percent in the US. Ferrari has been open about its ambitions for the Luce to attract a new generation of wealthy buyers, particularly those who are environmentally focused, but whether or not it’ll even appeal to them remains to be seen.
Independent designers revive the iconic Honda CRX.
Its retro stance echoes the second-generation model.
The study is envisioned as an electric hatch with 350 hp.
Honda’s product planners are deep in the weeds with the returning Prelude, but a sharper memory from the company’s back catalog has caught the internet’s attention. A digital concept drags the original CRX from the late 1980s into the present, and the result is the kind of car that makes you wonder why Honda isn’t building it.
The modern CRX prototype comes from designer and modeler Vitaly Batalka, with CG artist Valentin Komkov handling the visualization. The reference point is the second-generation CRX sold between 1987 and 1991, built on a shortened Civic platform and remembered for being one of the more entertaining small Hondas of its era.
Original Silhouette Carries The Update
The proportions are all there: short wheelbase, low roofline, and the split rear window layout that gave the original its profile. Up front, the blocky sealed-beam headlights have been swapped for slimmer LED units that flank a grille-less nose with the new Honda emblem at the center.
Illustrations: Vitaly Batalka and Valentin Komkov
The sculpted hood and the black trim on the bumpers are clear references to the original, joined by horizontal taillights and an illuminated CRX emblem at the back. The profile features clean surfacing with toned rear fenders, flush door handles, black pillars, frameless doors, and futuristic bi-tone alloy wheels.
The designers also put together a retro-styled “Turbo 2026” collector card with fictional specs to round out the exercise. The card pitches the reborn CRX as a fully electric machine rather than a hybrid, with 350 hp (261 kW / 355 PS) on tap. A claimed top speed of 285 km/h (177 mph) feels wildly optimistic for an EV of that output, and it would handily eclipse what the original 1.6-liter VTEC could manage.
Illustrations: Vitaly Batalka and Valentin Komkov
The two creators emphasized that the project was completed using traditional digital modeling workflows rather than generative AI tools. Batalka was responsible for the initial design and the 3D Alias modeling, while Komkov executed the final visualization in Blender.
The nearest thing Honda built to a true CRX successor was the short-lived CR-Z. The somewhat sporty three-door hatchback launched in 2010 with a self-charging hybrid powertrain and was discontinued in 2016 without a replacement. Projects like this one keep the idea alive, but the math gets harder every year. The current market gives Honda very little reason to spend the R&D money required to put a small, sporty three-door back on a showroom floor, and that’s a shame.
A professional designer rethinks the Jimny as a modular EV concept.
Study morphs from a compact SUV into a pickup or camper setup.
The electric layout could help the tiny off-roader return to Europe.
The popular Jimny in its current fourth-generation form has been on sale since 2018, which puts Suzuki well into the development cycle for whatever comes next. Until the factory shows its hand, Ford designer Christopher Giroux has put forward his own interpretation, with modularity as the organizing principle.
Giroux isn’t just another aspiring internet designer but a professional in the field. He spent the past six years designing cars at Ford Europe, and yet the Jimny is personal. His family owned two of the previous-generation cars, and that firsthand experience shaped this project. The result leans into sci-fi flourishes far more than the production car ever would.
Lunar Rover, Not Lunchbox
The boxy silhouette that defined every Jimny before it has been set aside. In its place is a muscular, sculpted body that looks built for a lunar expedition rather than a school run. The face wears minimalist LED headlights and a closed grille flanked by slim cooling intakes, and the rear treatment echoes the same theme to keep things cohesive.
Illustrations: Christopher Giroux
The profile is dominated by chunky multi-spoke wheels on grippy tires, with unusual intakes carved into the leading edge of the doors. Jimny lettering rides on the side skirts, blue LEDs sit on the fenders, and 4×4 decals confirm what the stance has already told you.
However, what is more interesting is the configurable bodystyle. The rear section of the roof can be removed together with the rear windows, creating a small pickup or a semi-convertible off-roader echoing the spirit of the original.
The designer has also created a camper configuration, with a custom-fit tent turning the Jimny into a mobile basecamp. Another highlight is the functional illuminated compass on the hood, with part of it extending inside the cabin.
Illustrations: Christopher Giroux
Frustrated by the current model’s struggle to meet strict emission regulations, which led to its withdrawal from European markets in passenger form, Giroux decided to opt for a fully electric powertrain. Being a conceptual proposal, it carries no estimated output or range figures, but all-wheel drive is a given for anything wearing the Jimny badge.
Suzuki had initially teased a fully electric version of the Jimny for Europe, but those plans appear to have been shelved. The current model received mild updates in 2025, proving that the company wants to extend its lifecycle without electrifying its tried-and-tested naturally-aspirated 1.5-liter engine.
Hong Kong is considering banning EVs with only electronic door handles.
China will require manual door releases on all new cars from 2027.
Officials say physical handles improve safety after crashes or power failures.
Electronic door handles have become one of the defining design trends of the EV era. They look futuristic, shave a bit of drag off the bodywork, and give cars like the Tesla Model S and Model Y their clean, button-free profiles. But now, Hong Kong is signaling it’s ready to follow China’s lead and shut the door on them.
Specifically, officials there say they’re preparing to ban new EVs equipped solely with electronic door handles. The move comes not long after mainland China’s decision to require physical mechanical releases on all new vehicles beginning in 2027. While Hong Kong is part of China, it maintains its own vehicle regulations and legal framework under the “one country, two systems” arrangement, meaning those rules don’t automatically apply there.
According to the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan said the government is reviewing the mainland’s newly published GB 48001-2026 standard, which focuses specifically on automotive door-handle safety.
Chan said the Transport Department has already consulted the industry about adopting similar local standards and reminded importers last year that all vehicles must include manual door releases. Somewhat perplexingly, it only applies to EVs, so combustion cars can continue on with hide-away or electric handles.
That said, the EV door handle rule would require both interior and exterior mechanical door handles on future vehicles. The reasoning is simple after you’ve seen videos of EVs catching on fire quickly. Electronic systems can fail after a crash, during a fire, or if a vehicle loses power, potentially trapping occupants inside or slowing emergency responders trying to get in.
Chan said the China’s standard specifically focuses on “addressing issues such as failure in operating door handles after accidents.”
In some vehicles, the emergency mechanical release is hidden, difficult to access, or works differently from what occupants expect in a panic situation. That’s become a bigger concern as automakers increasingly replace traditional hardware with powered systems. Some modern EVs don’t just use electronic exterior handles but also electronic interior door-open buttons, with backup releases tucked away in less intuitive locations.
Ringo Lee Yiu-pui of the Hong Kong, China Automobile Association added that first responders often still lack an exterior mechanical way to access the vehicle during emergencies. He also warned that sales staff frequently fail to explain how emergency releases actually work.
Interestingly, these regulations could very well have a worldwide ripple effect. Automakers rarely engineer market-specific door systems if they can avoid it, meaning these rules could eventually influence vehicles sold in Europe, North America, and elsewhere.
Jaguar will reveal its new electric GT sedan this September.
A 120 kWh battery targets about 435 miles of driving range.
Three electric motors are expected to produce over 986 hp.
The Jaguar GT has been teased for what feels like an eternity, but the finish line is finally in sight. Jaguar shocked the world with the release of its wild Type 00 Concept, created to preview its upcoming flagship EV. Recent prototypes of this car have shown it will take key design inspiration from the study, but morph into a slightly more restrained four-door sedan.
With the September reveal drawing closer, a new set of renderings attempt to offer a glimpse at what the production version could look like. That said, the heavily camouflaged prototypes have kept key details well hidden, making it tricky to pin down exactly how far Jaguar will dial things back from the concept.
These new renderings, created by Nikita Chuyko for Kolesa, hint at a softened approach up front. The dramatic lighting signature gives way to more conventional LED headlights, paired with a cleaner, more familiar nose where a traditional grille would typically sit. There is still some flair, including an illuminated Jaguar badge, though the bumper trades concept-car aggression for smoother, more restrained curves.
The softer, more fluid treatment carries along the sides, where clean door skins replace the Type 00’s sharp shoulder line. Like a Porsche Taycan, charging flaps have been added to both front quarter panels, and there are also pop-out door handles. At the rear, a simple full-width LED lightbar stretches across the car, and while these renderings show a conventional rear window, from what we’ve heard, the production model may ultimately do without one.
Another detail worth noting, at least in prototype form, is that the GT appears to wear flared front and rear fenders that are absent from these illustrations, along with edgier detailing than seen here.
We also recently caught our first look at the interior, which places the driver in a cocooned position, framed by a tall center console and low-slung seats. The cabin leans into crisp lines and defined edges, anchored by an all-new steering wheel that looks lifted from a 1970s concept car. The dashboard is pared back, with a curved screen and digital gauge cluster taking over the role of traditional dials.
What Powers The Electric GT?
Beyond the car’s design, we know it will sport a large 120 kWh battery pack that should give it about 435 miles (700 km) of range on the WLTP cycle. It’ll support ultra-fast charging, too, meaning 200 miles (322 km) of range will be added in as little as 15 minutes.
The Jaguar Type 00 Concept
Power comes from three electric motors drawing on that battery. Combined output is expected to be north of 986 hp and 959 lb-ft (1,300 Nm) of torque. None of which is exotic by current EV standards, but the Jaguar should still feel properly rapid, despite tipping the scales at as much as 5,952 lbs (2,700 kg).
Jaguar itself is targeting a 0-62mph (100km/h) time of around three seconds, a 155mph (250 km/h) top speed, and 350kW peak charging. Pricing is expected to start around $160,000, with sales beginning in 2027.
VW admits ID. models missed mark on design, usability and emotional appeal.
New leadership focuses on customers not egos to reshape future EV lineup.
Return of buttons, names and identity aims to reconnect brand with buyers
VW rebounded from the dieselgate scandal determined to do better, but the German brand’s boss has admitted that some of those early efforts landed wide of the mark. Now he’s on a mission to right some ID. wrongs and win back the crowd it drifted away from.
“It was clear to me that we were actually losing our core,” CEO Thomas Schäfer told journalists at the presentation of the heavily facelifted ID.3 Neo. The former Skoda chief, who bagged the top Wolfsburg job in 2022, says the brand had drifted from the VW people knew and loved.
The problems were everywhere once you started looking. Styling that didn’t quite feel right, confusing touch controls, and a naming strategy that ditched familiar badges in favor of cold tech-speak. Turns out customers didn’t love slider controls for basic functions, and they definitely missed the clarity of names like Golf and Tiguan.
Schäfer didn’t just tweak things around the edges. He gathered hundreds of managers, threw every issue on the table, and asked for brutal honesty. “We had to change ourselves, we had to create a new mindset,” Auto Express reports the CEO saying. He recalled how his wider team reacted with relief rather than resistance when he laid out the new plan.
Ask The Customer
Engineering boss Kai Grünitz says the reset goes deeper than pretty design. “We are doing customer clinics a lot,” he explained, signalling a shift away from gut feeling toward actual feedback. That means features get tested by real people before making production, not just approved in boardrooms because the CEO has decided he likes something and engineers don’t feel able to push back.
Exterior styling is getting a rethink, too, following the Schäfer-assisted exodus of Klaus Bischoff, architect of the mostly bland first-generation ID. cars. New creative boss Andy Mindt, who came from Bentley, has pushed for simpler, more timeless shapes, plus interiors that don’t require a tutorial. Physical buttons are coming back, and even door handles are being reconsidered so they actually work when your hands are full.
“We sell emotions, we sell memories,” Grünitz said, summing up the new direction, which is really just about getting back to the old direction. If VW can pull that off again with the help of cars like the new ID. Polo (below), maybe the people’s car maker really can find its groove.
On May 6, MIT AgeLab’s Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) Consortium, part of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, celebrated 10 years of its global academic-industry collaboration. AVT was founded with the aim of developing new data that contribute to automotive manufacturers, suppliers, and insurers’ real-world understanding of how drivers use and respond to increasingly sophisticated vehicle technologies, such as assistive and automated driving, while accelerating the applied insight needed to advance design and development. The celebration event brought together stakeholders from across the industry for a set of keynote addresses and panel discussions on critical topics significant to the industry and its future, including artificial intelligence, automotive technology, collision repair, consumer behavior, sustainability, vehicle safety policy, and global competitiveness.
Bryan Reimer, founder and co-director of the AVT Consortium, opened the event by remarking that over the decade AVT has collected hundreds of terabytes of data, presented and discussed research with its over 25 member organizations, supported members’ strategic and policy initiatives, published select outcomes, and built AVT into a global influencer with tremendous impact in the automotive industry. He noted that current opportunities and challenges for the industry include distracted driving, a lack of consumer trust and concerns around transparency in assistive and automated driving features, and high consumer expectations for vehicle technology, safety, and affordability. How will industry respond? Major players in attendance weighed in.
In a powerful exchange on vehicle safety regulation, John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and Mark Rosekind, former chief safety innovation officer of Zoox, former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, challenged industry and government to adopt a more strategic, data-driven, and collaborative approach to safety. They asserted that regulation must evolve alongside innovation, not lag behind it by decades. Appealing to the automakers in attendance, Bozzella cited the success of voluntary commitments on automatic emergency braking as a model for future progress. “That’s a way to do something important and impactful ahead of regulation.” They advocated for shared data platforms, anonymous reporting, and a common regulatory vision that sets safety baselines while allowing room for experimentation. The 40,000 annual road fatalities demand urgency — what’s needed is a move away from tactical fixes and toward a systemic safety strategy. “Safety delayed is safety denied,” Rosekind stated. “Tell me how you’re going to improve safety. Let’s be explicit.”
Drawing inspiration from aviation’s exemplary safety record, Kathy Abbott, chief scientific and technical advisor for the Federal Aviation Administration, pointed to a culture of rigorous regulation, continuous improvement, and cross-sectoral data sharing. Aviation’s model, built on highly trained personnel and strict predictability standards, contrasts sharply with the fragmented approach in the automotive industry. The keynote emphasized that a foundation of safety culture — one that recognizes that technological ability alone isn’t justification for deployment — must guide the auto industry forward. Just as aviation doesn’t equate absence of failure with success, vehicle safety must be measured holistically and proactively.
With assistive and automated driving top of mind in the industry, Pete Bigelow of Automotive News offered a pragmatic diagnosis. With companies like Ford and Volkswagen stepping back from full autonomy projects like Argo AI, the industry is now focused on Level 2 and 3 technologies, which refer to assisted and automated driving, respectively. Tesla, GM, and Mercedes are experimenting with subscription models for driver assistance systems, yet consumer confusion remains high. JD Power reports that many drivers do not grasp the differences between L2 and L2+, or whether these technologies offer safety or convenience features. Safety benefits have yet to manifest in reduced traffic deaths, which have risen by 20 percent since 2020. The recurring challenge: L3 systems demand that human drivers take over during technical difficulties, despite driver disengagement being their primary benefit, potentially worsening outcomes. Bigelow cited a quote from Bryan Reimer as one of the best he’s received in his career: “Level 3 systems are an engineer’s dream and a plaintiff attorney’s next yacht,” highlighting the legal and design complexity of systems that demand handoffs between machine and human.
In terms of the impact of AI on the automotive industry, Mauricio Muñoz, senior research engineer at AI Sweden, underscored that despite AI’s transformative potential, the automotive industry cannot rely on general AI megatrends to solve domain-specific challenges. While landmark achievements like AlphaFold demonstrate AI’s prowess, automotive applications require domain expertise, data sovereignty, and targeted collaboration. Energy constraints, data firewalls, and the high costs of AI infrastructure all pose limitations, making it critical that companies fund purpose-driven research that can reduce costs and improve implementation fidelity. Muñoz warned that while excitement abounds — with some predicting artificial superintelligence by 2028 — real progress demands organizational alignment and a deep understanding of the automotive context, not just computational power.
Turning the focus to consumers, a collision repair panel drawing Richard Billyeald from Thatcham Research, Hami Ebrahimi from Caliber Collision, and Mike Nelson from Nelson Law explored the unintended consequences of vehicle technology advances: spiraling repair costs, labor shortages, and a lack of repairability standards. Panelists warned that even minor repairs for advanced vehicles now require costly and complex sensor recalibrations — compounded by inconsistent manufacturer guidance and no clear consumer alerts when systems are out of calibration. The panel called for greater standardization, consumer education, and repair-friendly design. As insurance premiums climb and more people forgo insurance claims, the lack of coordination between automakers, regulators, and service providers threatens consumer safety and undermines trust. The group warned that until Level 2 systems function reliably and affordably, moving toward Level 3 autonomy is premature and risky.
While the repair panel emphasized today’s urgent challenges, other speakers looked to the future. Honda’s Ryan Harty, for example, highlighted the company’s aggressive push toward sustainability and safety. Honda aims for zero environmental impact and zero traffic fatalities, with plans to be 100 percent electric by 2040 and to lead in energy storage and clean power integration. The company has developed tools to coach young drivers and is investing in charging infrastructure, grid-aware battery usage, and green hydrogen storage. “What consumers buy in the market dictates what the manufacturers make,” Harty noted, underscoring the importance of aligning product strategy with user demand and environmental responsibility. He stressed that manufacturers can only decarbonize as fast as the industry allows, and emphasized the need to shift from cost-based to life-cycle-based product strategies.
Finally, a panel involving Laura Chace of ITS America, Jon Demerly of Qualcomm, Brad Stertz of Audi/VW Group, and Anant Thaker of Aptiv covered the near-, mid-, and long-term future of vehicle technology. Panelists emphasized that consumer expectations, infrastructure investment, and regulatory modernization must evolve together. Despite record bicycle fatality rates and persistent distracted driving, features like school bus detection and stop sign alerts remain underutilized due to skepticism and cost. Panelists stressed that we must design systems for proactive safety rather than reactive response. The slow integration of digital infrastructure — sensors, edge computing, data analytics — stems not only from technical hurdles, but procurement and policy challenges as well.
Reimer concluded the event by urging industry leaders to re-center the consumer in all conversations — from affordability to maintenance and repair. With the rising costs of ownership, growing gaps in trust in technology, and misalignment between innovation and consumer value, the future of mobility depends on rebuilding trust and reshaping industry economics. He called for global collaboration, greater standardization, and transparent innovation that consumers can understand and afford. He highlighted that global competitiveness and public safety both hang in the balance. As Reimer noted, “success will come through partnerships” — between industry, academia, and government — that work toward shared investment, cultural change, and a collective willingness to prioritize the public good.
Across a career’s worth of pioneering product designs, Doug Field’s work has shaped the experience of anyone who’s ever used a MacBook Air, ridden a Segway, or driven a Tesla Model 3.
But his newest project is his most ambitious yet: reinventing the Ford automobile, one of the past century’s most iconic pieces of technology.
As Ford’s chief electric vehicle (EV), digital, and design officer, Field is tasked with leading the development of the company’s electric vehicles, while making new software platforms central to all Ford models.
To bring Ford Motor Co. into that digital and electric future, Field effectively has to lead a fast-moving startup inside the legacy carmaker. “It is incredibly hard, figuring out how to do ‘startups’ within large organizations,” he concedes.
If anyone can pull it off, it’s likely to be Field. Ever since his time in MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (then known as “Leaders in Manufacturing”) program studying organizational behavior and strategy, Field has been fixated on creating the conditions that foster innovation.
“The natural state of an organization is to make it harder and harder to do those things: to innovate, to have small teams, to go against the grain,” he says. To overcome those forces, Field has become a master practitioner of the art of curating diverse, talented teams and helping them flourish inside of big, complex companies.
“It’s one thing to make a creative environment where you can come up with big ideas,” he says. “It’s another to create an execution-focused environment to crank things out. I became intrigued with, and have been for the rest of my career, this question of how can you have both work together?”
Three decades after his first stint as a development engineer at Ford Motor Co., Field now has a chance to marry the manufacturing muscle of Ford with the bold approach that helped him rethink Apple’s laptops and craft Tesla’s Model 3 sedan. His task is nothing less than rethinking how cars are made and operated, from the bottom up.
“If it’s only creative or execution, you’re not going to change the world,” he says. “If you want to have a huge impact, you need people to change the course you’re on, and you need people to build it.”
A passion for design
From a young age, Field had a fascination with automobiles. “I was definitely into cars and transportation more generally,” he says. “I thought of cars as the place where technology and art and human design came together — cars were where all my interests intersected.”
With a mother who was an artist and musician and an engineer father, Field credits his parents’ influence for his lifelong interest in both the aesthetic and technical elements of product design. “I think that’s why I’m drawn to autos — there’s very much an aesthetic aspect to the product,” he says.
After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University, Field took a job at Ford in 1987. The big Detroit automakers of that era excelled at mass-producing cars, but weren’t necessarily set up to encourage or reward innovative thinking. Field chafed at the “overstructured and bureaucratic” operational culture he encountered.
The experience was frustrating at times, but also valuable and clarifying. He realized that he “wanted to work with fast-moving, technology-based businesses.”
“My interest in advancing technical problem-solving didn’t have a place in the auto industry” at the time, he says. “I knew I wanted to work with passionate people and create something that didn’t exist, in an environment where talent and innovation were prized, where irreverence was an asset and not a liability. When I read about Silicon Valley, I loved the way they talked about things.”
During that time, Field took two years off to enroll in MIT’s LGO program, where he deepened his technical skills and encountered ideas about manufacturing processes and team-driven innovation that would serve him well in the years ahead.
“Some of core skill sets that I developed there were really, really important,” he says, “in the context of production lines and production processes.” He studied systems engineering and the use of Monte Carlo simulations to model complex manufacturing environments. During his internship with aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, he worked on automated design in computer-aided design (CAD) systems, long before those techniques became standard practice.
Another powerful tool he picked up was the science of probability and statistics, under the tutelage of MIT Professor Alvin Drake in his legendary course 6.041/6.431 (Probabilistic Systems Analysis). Field would go on to apply those insights not only to production processes, but also to characterizing variability in people’s aptitudes, working styles, and talents, in the service of building better, more innovative teams. And studying organizational strategy catalyzed his career-long interest in “ways to look at innovation as an outcome, rather than a random spark of genius.”
“So many things I was lucky to be exposed to at MIT,” Field says, were “all building blocks, pieces of the puzzle, that helped me navigate through difficult situations later on.”
Learning while leading
After leaving Ford in 1993, Field worked at Johnson and Johnson Medical for three years in process development. There, he met Segway inventor Dean Kamen, who was working on a project called the iBOT, a gyroscopic powered wheelchair that could climb stairs.
When Kamen spun off Segway to develop a new personal mobility device using the same technology, Field became his first hire. He spent nearly a decade as the firm’s chief technology officer.
At Segway, Field’s interests in vehicles, technology, innovation, process, and human-centered design all came together.
“When I think about working now on electric cars, it was a real gift,” he says. The problems they tackled prefigured the ones he would grapple with later at Tesla and Ford. “Segway was very much a precursor to a modern EV. Completely software controlled, with higher-voltage batteries, redundant systems, traction control, brushless DC motors — it was basically a miniature Tesla in the year 2000.”
At Segway, Field assembled an “amazing” team of engineers and designers who were as passionate as he was about pushing the envelope. “Segway was the first place I was able to hand-pick every single person I worked with, define the culture, and define the mission.”
As he grew into this leadership role, he became equally engrossed with cracking another puzzle: “How do you prize people who don’t fit in?”
“Such a fundamental part of the fabric of Silicon Valley is the love of embracing talent over a traditional organization’s ways of measuring people,” he says. “If you want to innovate, you need to learn how to manage neurodivergence and a very different set of personalities than the people you find in large corporations.”
Field still keeps the base housing of a Segway in his office, as a reminder of what those kinds of teams — along with obsessive attention to detail — can achieve.
Before joining Apple in 2008, he showed that component, with its clean lines and every minuscule part in its place in one unified package, to his prospective new colleagues. “They were like, “OK, you’re one of us,’” he recalls.
He soon became vice president of hardware development for all Mac computers, leading the teams behind the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro and eventually overseeing more than 2,000 employees. “Making things really simple and really elegant, thinking about the product as an integrated whole, that really took me into Apple.”
The challenge of giving the MacBook Air its signature sleek and light profile is an example.
“The MacBook Air was the first high-volume consumer electronic product built out of a CNC-machined enclosure,” says Field. He worked with industrial design and technology teams to devise a way to make the laptop from one solid piece of aluminum and jettison two-thirds of the parts found in the iMac. “We had material cut away so that every single screw and piece of electronics sat down into it an integrated way. That’s how we got the product so small and slim.”
“When I interviewed with Jony Ive” — Apple’s legendary chief design officer — “he said your ability to zoom out and zoom in was the number one most important ability as a leader at Apple.” That meant zooming out to think about “the entire ethos of this product, and the way it will affect the world” and zooming all the way back in to obsess over, say, the physical shape of the laptop itself and what it feels like in a user’s hands.
“That thread of attention to detail, passion for product, design plus technology rolled directly into what I was doing at Tesla,” he says. When Field joined Tesla in 2013, he was drawn to the way the brash startup upended the approach to making cars. “Tesla was integrating digital technology into cars in a way nobody else was. They said, ‘We’re not a car company in Silicon Valley, we’re a Silicon Valley company and we happen to make cars.’”
Field assembled and led the team that produced the Model 3 sedan, Tesla’s most affordable vehicle, designed to have mass-market appeal.
That experience only reinforced the importance, and power, of zooming in and out as a designer — in a way that encompasses the bigger human resources picture.
“You have to have a broad sense of what you’re trying to accomplish and help people in the organization understand what it means to them,” he says. “You have to go across and understand operations enough to glue all of those (things) together — while still being great at and focused on something very, very deeply. That’s T-shaped leadership.”
He credits his time at LGO with providing the foundation for the “T-shaped leadership” he practices.
“An education like the one I got at MIT allowed me to keep moving that ‘T’, to focus really deep, learn a ton, teach as much as I can, and after something gets more mature, pull out and bed down into other areas where the organization needs to grow or where there’s a crisis.”
The power of marrying scale to a “startup mentality”
In 2018, Field returned to Apple as a vice president for special projects. “I left Tesla after Model 3 and Y started to ramp, as there were people better than me to run high-volume manufacturing,” he says. “I went back to Apple hoping what Tesla had learned would motivate Apple to get into a different market.”
That market was his early love: cars. Field quietly led a project to develop an electric vehicle at Apple for three years.
Then Ford CEO Jim Farley came calling. He persuaded Field to return to Ford in late 2021, partly by demonstrating how much things had changed since his first stint as the carmaker.
“Two things came through loud and clear,” Field says. “One was humility. ‘Our success is not assured.’” That attitude was strikingly different from Field’s early experience in Detroit, encountering managers who were resistant to change. “The other thing was urgency. Jim and Bill Ford said the exact same thing to me: ‘We have four or five years to completely remake this company.’”
“I said, ‘OK, if the top of company really believes that, then the auto industry may be ready for what I hope to offer.’”
So far, Field is energized and encouraged by the appetite for reinvention he’s encountered this time around at Ford.
“If you can combine what Ford does really well with what a Tesla or Rivian can do well, this is something to be reckoned with,” says Field. “Skunk works have become one of the fundamental tools of my career,” he says, using an industry term that describes a project pursued by a small, autonomous group of people within a larger organization.
Ford has been developing a new, lower-cost, software-enabled EV platform — running all of the car’s sensors and components from a central digital operating system — with a “skunk works” team for the past two years. The company plans to build new sedans, SUVs, and small pickups based on this new platform.
With other legacy carmakers like Volvo racing into the electric future and fierce competition from EV leaders Tesla and Rivian, Field and his colleagues have their work cut out for them.
If he succeeds, leveraging his decades of learning and leading from LGO to Silicon Valley, then his latest chapter could transform the way we all drive — and secure a spot for Ford at the front of the electric vehicle pack in the process.
“I’ve been lucky to feel over and over that what I’m doing right now — they are going to write a book about it,” say Field. “This is a big deal, for Ford and the U.S. auto industry, and for American industry, actually.”
“So many things I was lucky to be exposed to at MIT,” Doug Field says, were “all building blocks, pieces of the puzzle, that helped me navigate through difficult situations later on.”
Car design is an iterative and proprietary process. Carmakers can spend several years on the design phase for a car, tweaking 3D forms in simulations before building out the most promising designs for physical testing. The details and specs of these tests, including the aerodynamics of a given car design, are typically not made public. Significant advances in performance, such as in fuel efficiency or electric vehicle range, can therefore be slow and siloed from company to company.
MIT engineers say that the search for better car designs can speed up exponentially with the use of generative artificial intelligence tools that can plow through huge amounts of data in seconds and find connections to generate a novel design. While such AI tools exist, the data they would need to learn from have not been available, at least in any sort of accessible, centralized form.
But now, the engineers have made just such a dataset available to the public for the first time. Dubbed DrivAerNet++, the dataset encompasses more than 8,000 car designs, which the engineers generated based on the most common types of cars in the world today. Each design is represented in 3D form and includes information on the car’s aerodynamics — the way air would flow around a given design, based on simulations of fluid dynamics that the group carried out for each design.
Each of the dataset’s 8,000 designs is available in several representations, such as mesh, point cloud, or a simple list of the design’s parameters and dimensions. As such, the dataset can be used by different AI models that are tuned to process data in a particular modality.
DrivAerNet++ is the largest open-source dataset for car aerodynamics that has been developed to date. The engineers envision it being used as an extensive library of realistic car designs, with detailed aerodynamics data that can be used to quickly train any AI model. These models can then just as quickly generate novel designs that could potentially lead to more fuel-efficient cars and electric vehicles with longer range, in a fraction of the time that it takes the automotive industry today.
“This dataset lays the foundation for the next generation of AI applications in engineering, promoting efficient design processes, cutting R&D costs, and driving advancements toward a more sustainable automotive future,” says Mohamed Elrefaie, a mechanical engineering graduate student at MIT.
Elrefaie and his colleagues will present a paper detailing the new dataset, and AI methods that could be applied to it, at the NeurIPS conference in December. His co-authors are Faez Ahmed, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, along with Angela Dai, associate professor of computer science at the Technical University of Munich, and Florin Marar of BETA CAE Systems.
Filling the data gap
Ahmed leads the Design Computation and Digital Engineering Lab (DeCoDE) at MIT, where his group explores ways in which AI and machine-learning tools can be used to enhance the design of complex engineering systems and products, including car technology.
“Often when designing a car, the forward process is so expensive that manufacturers can only tweak a car a little bit from one version to the next,” Ahmed says. “But if you have larger datasets where you know the performance of each design, now you can train machine-learning models to iterate fast so you are more likely to get a better design.”
And speed, particularly for advancing car technology, is particularly pressing now.
“This is the best time for accelerating car innovations, as automobiles are one of the largest polluters in the world, and the faster we can shave off that contribution, the more we can help the climate,” Elrefaie says.
In looking at the process of new car design, the researchers found that, while there are AI models that could crank through many car designs to generate optimal designs, the car data that is actually available is limited. Some researchers had previously assembled small datasets of simulated car designs, while car manufacturers rarely release the specs of the actual designs they explore, test, and ultimately manufacture.
The team sought to fill the data gap, particularly with respect to a car’s aerodynamics, which plays a key role in setting the range of an electric vehicle, and the fuel efficiency of an internal combustion engine. The challenge, they realized, was in assembling a dataset of thousands of car designs, each of which is physically accurate in their function and form, without the benefit of physically testing and measuring their performance.
To build a dataset of car designs with physically accurate representations of their aerodynamics, the researchers started with several baseline 3D models that were provided by Audi and BMW in 2014. These models represent three major categories of passenger cars: fastback (sedans with a sloped back end), notchback (sedans or coupes with a slight dip in their rear profile) and estateback (such as station wagons with more blunt, flat backs). The baseline models are thought to bridge the gap between simple designs and more complicated proprietary designs, and have been used by other groups as a starting point for exploring new car designs.
Library of cars
In their new study, the team applied a morphing operation to each of the baseline car models. This operation systematically made a slight change to each of 26 parameters in a given car design, such as its length, underbody features, windshield slope, and wheel tread, which it then labeled as a distinct car design, which was then added to the growing dataset. Meanwhile, the team ran an optimization algorithm to ensure that each new design was indeed distinct, and not a copy of an already-generated design. They then translated each 3D design into different modalities, such that a given design can be represented as a mesh, a point cloud, or a list of dimensions and specs.
The researchers also ran complex, computational fluid dynamics simulations to calculate how air would flow around each generated car design. In the end, this effort produced more than 8,000 distinct, physically accurate 3D car forms, encompassing the most common types of passenger cars on the road today.
To produce this comprehensive dataset, the researchers spent over 3 million CPU hours using the MIT SuperCloud, and generated 39 terabytes of data. (For comparison, it’s estimated that the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress would amount to about 10 terabytes of data.)
The engineers say that researchers can now use the dataset to train a particular AI model. For instance, an AI model could be trained on a part of the dataset to learn car configurations that have certain desirable aerodynamics. Within seconds, the model could then generate a new car design with optimized aerodynamics, based on what it has learned from the dataset’s thousands of physically accurate designs.
The researchers say the dataset could also be used for the inverse goal. For instance, after training an AI model on the dataset, designers could feed the model a specific car design and have it quickly estimate the design’s aerodynamics, which can then be used to compute the car’s potential fuel efficiency or electric range — all without carrying out expensive building and testing of a physical car.
“What this dataset allows you to do is train generative AI models to do things in seconds rather than hours,” Ahmed says. “These models can help lower fuel consumption for internal combustion vehicles and increase the range of electric cars — ultimately paving the way for more sustainable, environmentally friendly vehicles.”
“The dataset is very comprehensive and consists of a diverse set of modalities that are valuable to understand both styling and performance,” says Yanxia Zhang, a senior machine learning research scientist at Toyota Research Institute, who was not involved in the study.
This work was supported, in part, by the German Academic Exchange Service and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
In a new dataset that includes more than 8,000 car designs, MIT engineers simulated the aerodynamics for a given car shape, which they represent in various modalities, including “surface fields.”
As a major contributor to global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the transportation sector has immense potential to advance decarbonization. However, a zero-emissions global supply chain requires re-imagining reliance on a heavy-duty trucking industry that emits 810,000 tons of CO2, or 6 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, and consumes 29 billion gallons of diesel annually in the U.S. alone.
A new study by MIT researchers, presented at the recent American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2024 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, quantifies the impact of a zero-emission truck’s design range on its energy storage requirements and operational revenue. The multivariable model outlined in the paper allows fleet owners and operators to better understand the design choices that impact the economic feasibility of battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks for commercial application, equipping stakeholders to make informed fleet transition decisions.
“The whole issue [of decarbonizing trucking] is like a very big, messy pie. One of the things we can do, from an academic standpoint, is quantify some of those pieces of pie with modeling, based on information and experience we’ve learned from industry stakeholders,” says ZhiYi Liang, PhD student on the renewable hydrogen team at the MIT K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center (GEAR) and lead author of the study. Co-authored by Bryony DuPont, visiting scholar at GEAR, and Amos Winter, the Germeshausen Professor in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, the paper elucidates operational and socioeconomic factors that need to be considered in efforts to decarbonize heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs).
Operational and infrastructure challenges
The team’s model shows that a technical challenge lies in the amount of energy that needs to be stored on the truck to meet the range and towing performance needs of commercial trucking applications. Due to the high energy density and low cost of diesel, existing diesel drivetrains remain more competitive than alternative lithium battery-electric vehicle (Li-BEV) and hydrogen fuel-cell-electric vehicle (H2 FCEV) drivetrains. Although Li-BEV drivetrains have the highest energy efficiency of all three, they are limited to short-to-medium range routes (under 500 miles) with low freight capacity, due to the weight and volume of the onboard energy storage needed. In addition, the authors note that existing electric grid infrastructure will need significant upgrades to support large-scale deployment of Li-BEV HDVs.
While the hydrogen-powered drivetrain has a significant weight advantage that enables higher cargo capacity and routes over 750 miles, the current state of hydrogen fuel networks limits economic viability, especially once operational cost and projected revenue are taken into account. Deployment will most likely require government intervention in the form of incentives and subsidies to reduce the price of hydrogen by more than half, as well as continued investment by corporations to ensure a stable supply. Also, as H2-FCEVs are still a relatively new technology, the ongoing design of conformal onboard hydrogen storage systems — one of which is the subject of Liang’s PhD — is crucial to successful adoption into the HDV market.
The current efficiency of diesel systems is a result of technological developments and manufacturing processes established over many decades, a precedent that suggests similar strides can be made with alternative drivetrains. However, interactions with fleet owners, automotive manufacturers, and refueling network providers reveal another major hurdle in the way that each “slice of the pie” is interrelated — issues must be addressed simultaneously because of how they affect each other, from renewable fuel infrastructure to technological readiness and capital cost of new fleets, among other considerations. And first steps into an uncertain future, where no one sector is fully in control of potential outcomes, is inherently risky.
“Besides infrastructure limitations, we only have prototypes [of alternative HDVs] for fleet operator use, so the cost of procuring them is high, which means there isn’t demand for automakers to build manufacturing lines up to a scale that would make them economical to produce,” says Liang, describing just one step of a vicious cycle that is difficult to disrupt, especially for industry stakeholders trying to be competitive in a free market.
Quantifying a path to feasibility
“Folks in the industry know that some kind of energy transition needs to happen, but they may not necessarily know for certain what the most viable path forward is,” says Liang. Although there is no singular avenue to zero emissions, the new model provides a way to further quantify and assess at least one slice of pie to aid decision-making.
Other MIT-led efforts aimed at helping industry stakeholders navigate decarbonization include an interactive mapping tool developed by Danika MacDonell, Impact Fellow at the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC); alongside Florian Allroggen, executive director of MITs Zero Impact Aviation Alliance; and undergraduate researchers Micah Borrero, Helena De Figueiredo Valente, and Brooke Bao. The MCSC’s Geospatial Decision Support Tool supports strategic decision-making for fleet operators by allowing them to visualize regional freight flow densities, costs, emissions, planned and available infrastructure, and relevant regulations and incentives by region.
While current limitations reveal the need for joint problem-solving across sectors, the authors believe that stakeholders are motivated and ready to tackle climate problems together. Once-competing businesses already appear to be embracing a culture shift toward collaboration, with the recent agreement between General Motors and Hyundai to explore “future collaboration across key strategic areas,” including clean energy.
Liang believes that transitioning the transportation sector to zero emissions is just one part of an “energy revolution” that will require all sectors to work together, because “everything is connected. In order for the whole thing to make sense, we need to consider ourselves part of that pie, and the entire system needs to change,” says Liang. “You can’t make a revolution succeed by yourself.”
The authors acknowledge the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium for connecting them with industry members in the HDV ecosystem; and the MIT K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center and MIT Morningside Academy for Design for financial support.
A new study by MIT researchers quantifies the impact of a zero-emission truck’s design range on its energy storage requirements and operational revenue.
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