The automobile is one of the most important innovations of the last century. It has not been an unmitigated blessing, however, as it has led to millions of deaths through accidents, and it is among the biggest sources of pollution.
Mamatha Chamarthi is the Software Business and Product Management Leader at Stellantis, a post that she took on in April of 2021. Stellantis was formed in 2021 on the basis of a merger between the Italian-American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler and the French PSA group. The combined entity has a bit more than $200 billion in annual revenue.
It is refreshing to speak with Chamarthi about the car industry because she does not wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to the issues that the industry has had, just as she is inspired and energized by the role that technology can play in rectifying those issues. “Millions of people are seriously injured every year in car crashes [around the world]. Last year in the U.S., there was a 7% increase [in serious injuries],” she said. She recognizes that autonomous driving is the key to driving down these issues because 95% of the fatalities are due to human error. Her goals is to augment human intelligence to reduce this radically. “There is a bigger, broader purpose and a societal challenge that we are going after with autonomy. That is why the technology industry is also so fascinated with this area of autonomy.”
To solve autonomy requires the development of an ecosystem around Stellantis, and, here again, Chamarthi is part of the solution. “We are creating an ecosystem, partnering with technology companies like Amazon and Waymo,” noted Chamarthi. “We partnered with Waymo for autonomy, and we are also partnering with BMW, another traditional automaker just like us, to create our level two-plus [autonomy, out of five levels ] with enhanced autonomy to level three, which is where your hands are off the steering wheel, your eyes are off the road for some time and your feet are off the accelerator and the brake.” The company has developed adaptive cruise control, emergency braking and Traffic Jam Assist, as three components to help get from level two-plus driving to level three and beyond.
Chamarthi notes the necessity of partnering with pure-play technology companies, as they have technology budgets that dwarf those of automotive companies. A company like Stellantis can offer industry expertise and loyal customers, and technology companies can develop a portfolio of technologies for the Stellantises of the world to leverage as it climbs the rungs toward greater levels of autonomy.
Global warming is another major issue for the automotive industry to solve. Chamarthi admits that transportation is one of the biggest contributor to air pollution. The United States Environmental Protection Agency notes transportation as the third biggest contributing industry to greenhouse gas emissions. Again, she believes digital innovation should drive better outcomes on that front, as well. “We have to find an answer to reducing the carbon footprint because that is part of our responsibility to leave a cleaner, greener planet for future generations,” said Chamarthi. This will be enhanced not only through autonomy, but also through greater levels of electrification and shared mobility.
Chamarthi asked a rhetorical question. “What percentage of the time do we use [a car]? 7% maybe at best. 93% of the time it is sitting on a driveway or in a garage or a parking lot. In our digital economy, what happens with an underutilized asset? We find some creative, innovative ways of using that asset and that is what gave birth to ridehailing shared mobility.” To fill this need, Stellantis launched Free2Move, which provides customers the option to lease or own a mobility experience for a few minutes through to multiple years in duration. This mobility as a service offering will not be limited to Stellantis’ automotive portfolio. The company will provide the products and services to bring this to life for competitors’ portfolios, as well.
Beyond the virtuous aspects of digital innovation, Chamarthi is also excited about the experiences that can be brough to life through the connected automobile. “Can I personalize the driving experience of the customer?,” she asked. By way of example, she noted, “I can provide a Jeep for an off-road trail [for a customer], planning an end-to-end trail experience for my customer.” She likens this to excursions for a cruise line. If a customer signs up for Free2Move, they can have access to multiple vehicles for different kinds of experiences, each with a level of education and curation to make them safe and interesting at the same time.
Prior to her current role, Chamarthi was the Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Officer of Stellantis. She sees her evolution from CIO and CDO to running a profit center for the company as representative of the ascent of technology and digital across businesses more generally. Increasingly, “Technology is front and center,” she said. “It is exciting to be driving and shaping the automotive industry in these macro trends of autonomy, electrification, connected services and shared mobility. All of them are enabled by software, are all enabled by technology. It only makes complete sense to me that technology leaders are being asked to come lead from the front [rather] than leading from behind.”
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written two bestselling books, and his third, Getting to Nimble, was recently released. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
9/04/2018
By Peter High. Published on Forbes
Index Ventures General Partner, Mike Volpi, has an unusual distinction in the world of venture capital: he sits on the board of one of the oldest and largest automotive companies in the world, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (the company was actually formed in 2014, but the parts that came together are each quite old), and on the board of companies like Aurora, which provides self-driving car technology. As such, he understands and is helping to shape autonomous driving from the supply and demand sides deeper than most.
Born in Italy, raised in Japan, and educated in the United States, Volpi spent time at Cisco during times of extraordinary growth. As Chief Strategy Officer for the company he led corporate strategy, strategic alliances, and business development. During the seven years in which he held that role (spanning from 1994 through 2000), Volpi oversaw the acquisition of over 70 companies.
He started Index’s San Francisco office in 2009, ahead of the curve on tech’s move up the peninsula of Silicon Valley and into the city. Since then, he has led investments Arista Networks, Cloud.com, Hortonworks, Pure Storage, Sonos, and Zuora, among many other companies. We discuss the future of self driving cars, and several other topics in this far reaching interview.
(To listen to a podcast version of this interview, click this link. To read future articles like this one, follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: You have been a General Partner with Index Ventures since you joined the firm in 2009. One of the most prominent technologies you are involved in is the technology that powers autonomous vehicles. As you are an investor in that space, you have sat on the board of startups, such as Aurora, as well as the board of Fiat Chrysler. Could you elaborate on the different perspectives you gain from these diverse experiences with both digital native and digital immigrant organizations? Furthermore, can you talk about the progress that has been made in this industry now that the innovation that has been hyped up for years is becoming a reality?
Mike Volpi: There are two important messages to take away. The first is that the use of technology is enormously transformative and important to the business world, various segments of the industry, and society in general. There are 38,000 deaths in traffic accidents in the United States per year while places such as India see close to half a million deaths a year. This technology is built to change that and to create a safer environment for people to drive in. Additionally, this technology has a wide variety of ancillary benefits, such as the reduction of parking lots, the creation of urban driving environments, commute patterns, reduction of traffic, among others.
To read the full interview, please visit Forbes
6/4/18
Most of the tests of self-driving cars have taken place in cities. These are places where 3D mapping of streets, lanes, curbs, signs, and the like is undertaken with precision. One of the biggest challenges for self-driving cars is to navigate the roads less traveled.
“The cars use these maps to know where they are and what to do in the presence of new obstacles like pedestrians and other cars,” says Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “The need for dense 3-D maps limits the places where self-driving cars can operate.” Rus and colleagues at CSAIL have developed MapLite, a framework that allows self-driving cars to drive on roads they’ve never been on before without 3-D maps. I caught up with her recently to find out more about this innovative idea.
Peter High: Please describe how MapLite is different from other self-driving technology?
Daniela Rus: Most self-driving car companies only test their fleets in major cities where they’ve developed detailed 3D maps that are meticulously labeled with the exact positions of things like lanes, curbs and stop signs. These maps include environmental features detected by the sensors of the vehicle. The maps are created using 3D LIDAR systems that rely on light to scan the local space, accumulating millions of data points and extracting the features defining each place.
If we want self-driving cars to be a viable global technology, this reliance on detailed prior maps is a problem. Today’s autonomous vehicles are not able to drive in rural environments where we do not have maps — in other words, on the millions of miles of roads that are unpaved, unlit or unreliably marked.
MapLite is a first step for enabling self-driving cars to navigate on roads that they’ve never been on before using only GPS and sensors.
Our system combines GPS data – like the kind you’d find on Google Maps – with data taken from LIDAR sensors. Together, these two elements allow us to autonomously drive a car on multiple unpaved country roads and reliably detect the road more than 100 feet in advance.
MapLite is a first step toward creating safe and capable autonomous cars that can support drivers in new road situations. Imagine if cars could learn how we drive and how to never be responsible for a collision? What if they could become our trusted partners to help us navigate tricky roads, watch our backs when we’re tired, and even make our time in the car fun?
In the future, autonomous cars won’t just be able to sense the state of the road; they’ll be able to recognize the state of the driver. Imagine if your car could tell you were having a bad day and turn on your favorite album. Or imagine if it could talk to your fridge, figure out that you’re out of milk, and suggest where to stop on your way home. Imagine if your car knew that you forgot to call your parents yesterday and could issue a gentle reminder and suggest a safe stretch of highway where you could make the call. These are just a few of the possibilities when we bring together cars, computer science and artificial intelligence.
by Peter High, published on Forbes
3-15-2016
As I have interviewed IT leaders at many companies, there are a handful of companies that seem to have the biggest family trees in producing CIO talent. Few can match Ford Motor Company’s family tree. The CIOs at Boeing and Nike and executives above the CIO rank at Biogen and Deutsche Bank have each spent time in the IT department at Ford. I was curious about this phenomenon, but especially curious to hear from Marcy Klevorn, who for some time had been groomed to become the global CIO of Ford. Her highly regarded predecessor, Nick Smither identified her as a successor and then provided the kinds of opportunities for her in multiple units and geographies to ensure she would have depth and breadth of experience.
Since ascending to the top role in IT a bit more than a year ago, Klevorn has bolstered the IT strategy process and content, she has helped weave IT further into the narrative of customer experience and IoT trends that are important to the industry. All the while, she has used her love of cars as inspiration for new ideas on how IT can make Ford continue to improve.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 34th article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read the prior 33 with the CIOs of companies like Intel, GE, P&G, Kaiser Permanente, and AARP, among many others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: You have spent a little more than a year in role as Chief Information Officer of Ford. You followed a leader who was deemed successful and was retiring. You had been with the organization for a while. I do not imagine it was a surprise as you transitioned to the role of CIO. I imagine this was a smoother transition than coming in from the outside. I would love to understand how you prepared yourself for the role prior to assuming the position, and the sorts of things you did in the early stages of your tenure to set you and your team up for success.
Marcy Klevorn: One thing that we think about at Ford is succession planning, and making sure we have a smooth transition to provide a stable environment for our team to continue to operate. The company continues to change and evolve, so we all need to change and evolve as well. I was conscious of making sure that we had a smooth transition in the handoff.
I worked with Nick Smither, my predecessor, and I did a live interview about the transition, and he offered feedback on why he thought I would be a good candidate and then asked me about what was important to me going forward in the role. Then that was broadcast to the entire company. That was one thing that set this was going to be a smooth handoff. We were aligned on the succession, and we were going to continue to work together until the final days. That was the public way we did that.
The transition happened at a time where Ford was changing, and disrupting itself, going from an automotive manufacturing company to a technology-led company, and a mobility/transportation company. Obviously, IT plays a big part in that. At the same time that this was happening, IT had to re-invent itself as well in response to the direction the company was taking.
Before Nick left, I asked him to participate in a video with me and my IT leadership team that we sent to the employees their first day back at work in 2015 – my first official day in the job – to talk about this transformation. I wanted to include Nick because I thought it was important to give that signal that we were not going to flip the switch and everything was going to change. It is a journey and evolution, and we were going to continue to support Ford as we change the company. Nick was involved in those conversations, so it was going to be orderly and smooth.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
2-16-2016
Amy Doherty was a four year veteran and right hand woman of the CIO of AARP when she was tapped to become interim-CIO in March of 2015. Her predecessor, Terry Bradwell, was elevated to a newly created role of Chief Enterprise Strategy & Innovation Officer of the membership organization for people age 50 and over that operates as a non-profit advocate for its members and is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. Following a highly regarded leader who would remain at the firm meant that there was not a mandate for tremendous change, but nevertheless, Doherty got to work at creating her own vision and leadership style.
She has focused continuing the evolution of IT into a value creator and innovator within AARP. She has creatively built bonds and lines of communications with her team through regular meetings with everyone on the team to better understand how things are progressing. Year over year delivery of projects is up ninety-six percent , and there have been thirty-four percent fewer outages. As Doherty notes in this interview, it is the cultural work that has been the secret weapon in her arsenal by driving engagement, accountability, and fun in the department. AARP leadership was sufficiently impressed by the progress to remove the “interim” title in October.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 33rd article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read interviews with CIOs from GE, P&G, Microsoft, CVS Caremark, and Ecolab, please visit this link. To read future interviews like this one, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: I thought we would begin with your tenure as Chief Information Officer at AARP. You began as interim CIO in March of 2015, and in October removed the interim title. You are now the incumbent of the role. Could you talk about that period when your rose to the role on an interim basis and then took it over permanently? What were some of the things you did during that period?
Amy Doherty: I think the most immediate action I needed to take was to settle the staff. They have a great affection for Terry [Bradwell], and a lot of loyalty. He is an engaging leader, and they needed to see me as personable, approachable, and invigorating in the way that he is. They were big shoes to fill. I needed to take some action immediately, so I amped up my personal engagement with the staff, and then I went on a tour with our business leaders talking about what my focus would be. Which was to be not the external AARP market and constituency, as Terry was taking that one, but I wanted to focus my effort on how I could make an AARP employee as effective as they could be, by providing the right technology, frameworks, etc. That was warmly welcomed.
I listened a lot, and I learned a lot about what expectations were of the role, and where they wanted the focus for now. I believe that served me well. I was able to make a few tweaks in the overall execution strategy to focus on the fundamentals and get things like workforce productivity on track. There was a focused and concerted effort to make sure that it stayed on track.
High: You were in an unusual situation. Many Chief Information Officers come in to replace somebody – even somebody who was asked to leave – and there is a mandate for change as a result of that. You not only followed somebody who was loved, but also followed somebody who moved onto a different role within the organization. As you were putting your fingerprints on a new IT plan, how much of it was continuity of what was already going on versus some new things?
To continue reading, please visit Forbes
12-29-2015
There have been a lot of great stories on technology this year that track hot topics like artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, self-driving cars, cybercrime, and the like. Each of these topics among others are covered in great depth in the stories that follow, which are my take on the top technology stories of 2015.
What Is Code? by Paul Ford in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, June 11, 2015
On June 11, 2015, Bloomberg BusinessWeek dedicated an entire issue to the topic of coding and its importance. This 38,000 word masterpiece was the most bought issue up to that point, and the online version has interactive elements so that the reader can actually code while reading the piece. Author Paul Ford is both a writer and a coder, but he has a special gift for making a seemingly esoteric topic accessible.
To hear the author and Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel talk about the article, watch this great interview by Charlie Rose.
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence and The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction by Tim Urban in Wait but Why, January 22, 2015 and January 27, 2015, respectively
Artificial Intelligence is among the most written about topics today. Perhaps no one has written as cogently about the topic in the past year than Tim Urban on the long-form article site that he started called Wait but Why. Urban employs lucid storytelling and humor to provide the most comprehensive account of what Artificial Intelligence is and why it is so important.
