GM's "Future Leaders": Christopher Borroni-Bird
September 17, 2008
By Dale Buss
With so much pressure from every quarter on General Motors and other automakers to make huge leaps forward in fuel-efficiency -- and now! -- Christopher Borroni-Bird has become a major player on the most important stage in the global automotive industry.
And he understands the urgency of the task.
"There's more urgency than even six months ago," said the 43-year-old U.K. native, who is GM's director of advanced vehicle technology concepts in Detroit.
"With the run-up in gasoline prices, and more people taking public transport to work and doing other things that they wouldn't think of a few years ago, it is reinforcing fresh thinking in personal mobility," he added. "And we know that making more efficient vehicles isn't going to be sufficient by itself."
Borroni-Bird dropped hints about "electric vehicles that don't pollute and are tied together through vehicle-to-vehicle communications technology to help traffic congestion and parking. We see the fundamental technologies and have a clear understanding of what they are."
And while he can't be too specific about exactly how GM is planning to work its way through this epochal challenge, he understands that "it's important to show that [the company] is part of the solution."
By Way of Chrysler
But unlike many of GM's "future leaders" under the GMnext rubric, Borroni-Bird has not been a GM lifer.
After getting his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in a strange discipline called "surface science" -- think of things like understanding the reactions within a catalytic converter, he said -- Borroni-Bird went to Tokyo University to conduct post-doctoral research. At that point he knew he wanted to become involved in the auto industry "to make cars better, because it is one of those products with a huge impact on the environment and on society as a whole," he said.
"Autos also are a fun thing to do because they're a product everyone can relate to," Borroni-Bird said. "They're kind of art and science. Products like aircraft, for example, are really technical, but there's not much style there because they're completely driven by function. Other products are style but not substance. A car seems to be the blend of the two."
Chrysler hired Borroni-Bird in the early '90s. "The national labs in America were scrambling to find a new mission then, after the end of the Cold War -- they started talking about turning swords into plowshares -- and GM was saying that all this capability existed in the national labs that they were going to take advantage of. Chrysler felt they needed to compete."
So, Chrysler dispatched Borroni-Bird to visit national laboratories and recommend what technologies there were most applicable to improving automobiles. That's where he began picking up on cutting-edge research into fuel cells. "I managed to convert that knowledge," Borroni-Bird said, "into heading up Chrysler's fuel-cell program."
Fusing Technology and Design
One of his first projects was to work with GM's Delphi division on a gasoline-powered fuel cell. He also began pressing his employer, Chrysler, to look for ways to merge cutting-edge environmental technologies with design.
"We had lots of folks focused on meeting future safety and fuel technologies, and also performance and comfort features, but not to enable design proportions and interior vehicle layouts that would accommodate them," he recalled. "I wanted to take advantage of environmental technologies to enable styling flexibility by using things such as aluminum."
GM proved to be more interested in this concept than Chrysler and hired away Borroni-Bird in 2000. Since then, he has been working on fusing fuel-cell technology with by-wire technology and the styling and design implications of that approach. His work helped result in the Sequel fuel-cell concept vehicle.
Since then, Borroni-Bird has been working on even more advanced concept vehicles in which most functions are controlled by wire, emphasizing integration of the technology with safety, styling and other vehicle parameters.
"In the future," he said, "vehicles will be electrically driven with electronic controls for brakes and steering, from fuel cells and hybrid powertrains. We want to provide vehicles that are not just good for the environment but also appealing to people."
Christopher Borroni-Bird
Title: Director, Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts
Location: GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan
Age: 43
Born: United Kingdom
Personal: Married with three children.
Spare-time pursuits: Include helping the kids with Scouts and sports. "I haven't gotten used to baseball. I'm much more into cricket. But it's harder to find around here than in England."
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