engineer and yeah we think a little
differently than most you see another
car – stop sign I see another variable
entering the equation you see traffic
congestion I see a queueing theory
problem right so when I graduated from
high school on a Friday I went to work
on Monday at Delco electronics in Kokomo
Indiana as a co-op student I was pumped
alright I was an engineering co-op
student at Kettering University and I’m
a big fan of the co-op education model
what it was when it was time to graduate
they asked the coops the top three
places that you’d like to work and I
didn’t get any of my choices all my
buddies got all my choices and I was
pretty sure I had better grades than
they had right but I got something much
better I was on the team that put the
first computer on a car ever now since
that time the cars become the biggest
most powerful computer that you own
today’s cars have 50 computers have 50
200 million lines of software code and
that’s soon going to double ironed if
you think about a 35 fighter jet for
example it has 24 million lines of code
an Android operating system has 12
million lines of code so I completed a
mechanical electrical engineering degree
at Kettering and one of the hardest
classes for Electrical Engineering is
field theory now I had a professor Jack
Owen for Fields jumping jack we called
him he had a passion for a field theory
and I did not I couldn’t see where I’d
ever used this electromagnetic wave
propagation stuff and here’s a final was
one question and I’m embarrassed to say
that I turned it in blank that wasn’t a
good thing but I I squeaked by with a C
in the class so fast forward a few years
I got to work on a start-up JV with
Hughes Aircraft to develop both the next
generation military radar and radar for
cars so radar gives eyes to planes
why couldn’t we give eyes to cars
right that’s that was a concept so for a
young engineer this was a very cool
opportunity so our very first radar demo
was on a Cadillac in Detroit and who was
one of the very first people to have a
look at this
there’s my fields professor from
Kettering it was jumping-jack he’d
become the chief electrical engineer for
General Motors so I’m seeing my career
pass before my eyes here right I hadn’t
seen him in years he comes walking
across the parking lot and he’s 50 feet
away and he looks at me he goes Owens
you can’t possibly have had anything to
do with this car this radar you turned
my final in blank so after about an hour
walking through the car what the radar
did he was convinced he did a little
better job in class than he thought and
I’m proud to say that we saw that
breakthrough technology applied on a car
on a Jaguar in 1999 it was the first
radar on the road ever and that was a
real game-changer radar helps make the
car safer and that arc of innovation has
continued ever since so why is it such a
big deal there’s 1.3 million fatalities
globally every year and that means
somebody dies in a car accident every 30
seconds so I want to share a personal
story that happened right here in
southeastern Michigan just a few weeks
ago a very dear friend of mine lost his
18 year old son in a car accident now he
had his whole life ahead of him just two
weeks into his college career and now
his family is left shattered and I
really believe that technology I’m
talking about might have made a
difference in that accident so think
about this there we go an extra half
second of warning can mitigate 60% of
accidents so how fast is that if you’re
a Detroit Tigers fan it takes Justin
Verlander’s fastball a little less than
half second to cross home plate right so
we do that all the time a half second we
take our eyes off the road for things
like adjusting dials or eating or
talking to a passenger I don’t even have
to mention our smart phones we get away
with it until we don’t
and then it’s disaster now this
technology can give you back that extra
half second right it can make sure the
car is never distracted even if you are
now the automotive industry has done a
tremendous job improving the safety of
vehicles protecting the occupant in the
event of a crash but we’ve plateaued in
recent years in fact last year
fatalities went up 8% and this year
already in the first six months of 2016
they’ve gone up another 10% so active
safety higher levels of automated
driving are needed now to avoid the
accident in the first place it’s no
longer a nice-to-have
it’s a half to have so how do we make
our move into automated driving we we
took Road tested safety technologies and
we leapfrogged we leveraged a global
engineering team we challenged a young
group of engineers with the job of
building this car we created a dream
team if you will they how they had
special skills and experiences one was
right out of college and we turned them
loose they used an audio sq5 platform
you see it here and they immediately
dismantled it in fact they actually laid
out paper cut out of the car on the
floor and rework the wiring and sensors
until they all fit and if you think
about it automated cars need an
incredible amount of firepower they need
wires and connectors they need sensors
and computers to get the job done so we
mix that in with a little pizza a little
beer many Layton Heights and they built
that car in ten months which is crazy
fast in the automotive world and we
named it
Road Runner the Road Runner went on to
make history is the first automated car
to drive coast-to-coast 3,400 miles San
Francisco to New York City they drove
automated mode 99% of the time collected
3 terabytes of data now the cars
computers collected all the data but the
so did the people that went along for
the ride the car never got distracted
even when driving through gorgeous
scenery the car was never blinded by the
Sun
the car never got tired even while
driving through Texas for three boring
days so you get the idea we saw
everything from roadkill to road rage
and Roadrunner never swayed from his job
which was getting safely to the
destination so Roadrunner thanks to very
skilled computer scientists was able to
make human-like decisions but must much
faster than you or I could like easing
to the far edge of a lane when a truck
pulled up next to it radar worked
flawlessly my fields professor will be
would be proud of us here radar energy
bouncing all over the place and these
dense metal structures if you will so
thank you again professor Olin so it
really was an amazing it was a historic
journey it’s one I’ll never forget but I
knew we could do it I just didn’t think
we could do it that fast when the drive
was complete it reinforced to me what a
major socio-economic impact that active
safety and self-driving cars could have
that the lives that would be saved the
reduction in congestion and emissions
mobility for the physically challenged
and I had a lightbulb moment our entire
transportation system is being disrupted
as we speak a big change is already
underway so we continue to make progress
we recently launched an automated
mobility on-demand system in partnership
with the government of Singapore so what
does that mean imagine just pulling out
your phone you open an app and a
driverless car picks you up anytime
anywhere it will truly connect
passengers to the vehicles extended
ecosystem and the vehicle to the
Internet now what’s really cool about
this is we’re building an ecosystem the
foundation upon which anyone can build
and that will enable new levels of
on-demand personalization services so
would you take part in this automotive
transformation will you build that next
great app now as I look back and ahead
I’m struck by the awesome power of
technology I’ve had a front-row seat
I’ve been very fortunate during this
transportation evolution from the first
computer in a car to the first radar in
a car to the first automated drive
across this great country of ours but I
really I’ve really never been more
confident
soon get to the point where no one will
ever be hurt in a car or by a car again
and I’ll do my damnedest to make that
future a reality thank you [Applause]