Driving to a Sustainable Future: A New DNA for the Automobile

By Larry Burns

Vice President, R&D and Strategic Planning for General Motors
Contact: karen.a.johnson@gm.com

Bio: Larry Burns is vice president of General Motors Research & Development and Strategic Planning.  In this post, he oversees GM's advanced technology, innovation programs, and corporate strategy.  He is a member of GM’s Automotive Strategy Board and Automotive Product Board.

In addition to driving innovation into today's vehicles, Burns is championing GM's "reinvention" of the automobile around advanced propulsion, electronics, telematics, and materials technologies.  The goal is to realize sustainable mobility with vehicles that are aspirational and affordable. 

Burns began his career in 1969 as a member of the Research & Development staff, where his research focused on transportation, logistics, and production systems.  He subsequently held executive positions in several GM divisions in the areas of product program management, quality, production control, industrial engineering, and product and business planning.  In May 1998, he was named a vice president of General Motors, with responsibility for R&D and Planning.

Burns holds a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. He also has a master's degree in engineering/public policy from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University).

Burns is a member of the USCAR Operating Council and the FreedomCAR Partnership Executive Steering Committee.  He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Midwest Research Institute and serves on the board of the University of Michigan’s Automotive Research Center and the External Advisory Board for its Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute.  In addition, he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Advisory Council for the University of California Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies, and the Advisory Board for the Tennenbaum Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology.  

Abstract: Driven by the opportunity of sustainable personal mobility, the auto industry today is reinventing the automobile using a new “DNA” that will make our future vehicles more energy efficient and sustainable. The new DNA will replace today’s mechanically driven vehicles – which are powered by the internal combustion engine, energized by petroleum, and controlled mechanically – with electrically driven vehicles that are powered by electric motors, batteries, and fuel cells, energized by electricity and hydrogen, and controlled electronically.

In this talk, Dr. Burns will address the opportunities and challenges presented by the emergence of the new DNA and the increasing electrification of the vehicle. He will highlight how the introduction of electric propulsion, diverse energy pathways, advanced electronics, and connected vehicle technologies will revolutionize personal mobility and be paradigm shifting for the industry.