On May 6, MIT AgeLab’s Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) Consortium, a 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 recent data that contribute to automotive manufacturers, suppliers, and insurers’ real-world understanding of how drivers use and reply to increasingly sophisticated vehicle technologies, equivalent to assistive and automatic 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 last decade AVT has collected a whole bunch of terabytes of knowledge, presented and discussed research with its over 25 member organizations, supported members’ strategic and policy initiatives, published select outcomes, and built AVT into a world influencer with tremendous impact within the automotive industry. He noted that current opportunities and challenges for the industry include distracted driving, an absence of consumer trust and concerns around transparency in assistive and automatic driving features, and high consumer expectations for vehicle technology, safety, and affordability. How will industry respond? Major players in attendance weighed in.
In a robust 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 many years. 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 approach to do something necessary and impactful ahead of regulation.” They advocated for shared data platforms, anonymous reporting, and a typical 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 the way you’re going to enhance 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 within the automotive industry. The keynote emphasized that a foundation of safety culture — one which 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 should be measured holistically and proactively.
With assistive and automatic driving top of mind within the industry, Pete Bigelow of offered a realistic diagnosis. With firms like Ford and Volkswagen stepping back from full autonomy projects like Argo AI, the industry is now focused on Level 2 and three technologies, which discuss with assisted and automatic driving, respectively. Tesla, GM, and Mercedes are experimenting with subscription models for driver assistance systems, yet consumer confusion stays high. JD Power reports that many drivers don’t grasp the differences between L2 and L2+, or whether these technologies offer safety or convenience features. Safety advantages 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 profit, potentially worsening outcomes. Bigelow cited a quote from Bryan Reimer as top-of-the-line he’s received in his profession: “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.
When it comes to 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 depend on general AI megatrends to unravel domain-specific challenges. While landmark achievements like AlphaFold exhibit 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 firms fund purpose-driven research that may 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 only computational power.
Turning the main 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 car technology advances: spiraling repair costs, labor shortages, and an absence of repairability standards. Panelists warned that even minor repairs for advanced vehicles now require costly and sophisticated 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 shortage of coordination between automakers, regulators, and repair 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 dangerous.
While the repair panel emphasized today’s urgent challenges, other speakers looked to the long run. Honda’s Ryan Harty, for instance, highlighted the corporate’s aggressive push toward sustainability and safety. Honda goals for zero environmental impact and nil traffic fatalities, with plans to be 100% electric by 2040 and to steer in energy storage and clean power integration. The corporate has developed tools to teach young drivers and is investing in charging infrastructure, grid-aware battery usage, and green hydrogen storage. “What consumers buy available 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 because the industry allows, and emphasized the necessity 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 car technology. Panelists emphasized that consumer expectations, infrastructure investment, and regulatory modernization must evolve together. Despite record bicycle fatality rates and protracted distracted driving, features like school bus detection and stop sign alerts remain underutilized as a result of skepticism and price. Panelists stressed that we must design systems for proactive safety relatively 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 patron 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 long run of mobility depends upon rebuilding trust and reshaping industry economics. He called for global collaboration, greater standardization, and transparent innovation that buyers can understand and afford. He highlighted that global competitiveness and public safety each hang within 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 general public good.
