“Changes happening today will fundamentally affect how people interact with transportation in the months and years ahead,” said Shailen Bhatt, president and CEO of ITS America. “We are thrilled to return to Detroit to talk about advances that will transform transportation.”
The line-up of keynote speakers and panellists underlines how important this annual meeting and its transformative effect is, both to government and industry. For instance, Heidi King, Deputy Administrator, NHTSA, will provide the opening keynote, The Future of Transportation, which will set the scene for the Mobility 2.0 Roundtable which follows. Wednesday’s keynote presentations will be provided by Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan and Mark Reuss, EVP Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, General Motors. On Thursday, delegates will hear a keynote on Managing Risk in the 21st Century by Tom Gebhardt, Executive Officer, Panasonic Corporation, Chairman & CEO, Panasonic Corporation of North America.
Panellists and presenters, all senior government and industry leaders, will support the keynote speakers and provide their insights and vision on the changes and challenges facing transportation as it comes to grips with an increasingly fast-changing present and what can sometimes seem a bewildering future. In all, delegates at the ITS America Annual Meeting Detroit have a unique opportunity to hear about, and understand, the overarching questions that are vital to prepare markets, governments, and researchers for the future. (See separate story below, Key focus areas of Transportation 2.0).
A major new feature of this ITS America annual meeting will be the Smart Mobility Stage situated in a prime location on the exhibit floor. This builds off of the tremendous success of the Smart Cities Stage at the 2017 ITS World Congress in Montréal and it is where thought leaders, cutting edge visionaries, leading technology companies and manufacturers, will discuss, debate and advise on the trends and future of intelligent mobility.
In addition, the first in-person event in the Federal Highway Administration’s National Dialogue on Highway Automation series will be held on Thursday, 7 June, in conjunction with the ITS America annual meeting. The Dialogue aims to facilitate information sharing, identify key issues and prepare for integrating automated vehicles into the road network.
A key component of all ITS America annual meetings is the programme of Demonstrations and this year sees a wide-ranging and comprehensive range of 15 live demonstrations – a menu of these, and the organisations involved, is below: ITS America Annual Meeting Detroit Demonstrations. The Technical Tours programme will also provide attendees with an opportunity to visit a range of installations in the Detroit area.
Meanwhile, the main exhibition area will see over 100 companies participating to show their latest products, systems and innovations.
Shailen Bhatt, president and CEO of ITS America is bursting with enthusiasm about what visitors are going to see. “The change in transportation that’s coming is like the Industrial Revolution – but in the span of a few decades. It’s a global scale of change.”
And the place to get a real understanding of that, and more, is in Detroit from 4-7 June – at the must-attend transportation technology event in North America this year.
