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FORD’S MATT JONES

Listen as Matt Jones, Ford’s global director of technology strategy and the
president of COVESA, explains how a software-centric, cloud-oriented, and
collaboratively based approach will fundamentally change the automotive and
transportation industries in this Forbes “Futures in Focus” podcast.

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I'm Michael Gale, your host for today's edition of Futures in Focus from Forbes
Insights. I'm the co-author of the Wall Street Journal and Amazon best-selling
book on digital transformation titled The Digital Helix. This is a podcast
focused on interviewing visionaries and leaders with their insights and ideas
about the world 10 years from now or what the world 10 years from now might be
like in terms of what we're doing for work, what technologies we will be using
and won't be using by then, and how our world might be organized differently,
and even what we might be eating, wearing, and doing for fun.

Welcome to this week's edition of Forbes' Futures in Focus. I'm your host
Michael Gale. And I'm really excited to have a guest here today, who's going to
talk about the future of democratizing transport. Matt Jones is the Director of
Technology Strategy at Ford Motor Company. He's also actually as importantly
President of COVESA, which is the Connected Vehicle Alliance, that brings
together some of the best thinking in the industry across the globe about what a
future connected vehicular and transportation experience looks like. Matt, thank
you for joining us today.

Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Michael.

Good. Let me set this up in an odd way. Look, we have as a premise for the
podcast that less than 9% of us actually think about the world of 2032 in 2022.
But 95% of us plus are going to live here. And we're also living right now in
the most remarkable reinvention of the transportation industry. You were
actually involved in the innovation area and actually creation of a Hyperloop,
which we're going to talk about today. But whether or not it's EVs, or having
pizzas delivered by autonomous vehicles, or in a completely different ideas of
what transportation is, we're entering a revolution.

And one of the things that is always concerning in a revolution is that
everybody equally benefits from the upside because nobody would argue by the
time 2032 rolls around that people should have unequal opportunities in
transportation. So we're going to talk about those that don't have credit cards,
those that maybe have physical disabilities, and how really this is a moment to
equal that level playing field between everybody. Does that make sense?

100%.

So look, let's talk about why mobility matters when we're thinking about 2032
and why it matters in a different way. Talk to us.

I often bring this back to, why do we have mobility at all? Why do we have cars
on the road? Why do we have public transportation networks? And I can remember
when I was sat there. And I got a call one day. I was in Portland, working for a
company called Moovel. That was a Daimler subsidiary, really focused on the next
generation of mobility. How will you stitch together trucks and buses and cars
and all of these different systems?

And I got a call from somebody that said, you should contemplate coming to work
for a Hyperloop. And they explain the system and all the technological jargon
about how cool it would be to have an autonomous vehicle at 750 miles an hour in
a vacuum tube. And then they said, can you imagine a time when you could travel
from Sacramento to San Francisco in 12 minutes?

And that really attracted my attention. Not because it's 12 minutes, but think
about what that would do. Think about all of the people that, for one reason or
another, can't live on the Peninsula in the Bay Area. Think about how it would
enable the interactions by literally millions more people if you could get from
the center of San Francisco to Sacramento. Literally, you could live in
Sacramento with Sacramento house prices and be at a bank, be anywhere, up and
down that entire Bay Area and down the Peninsula in a matter of minutes.

And then it started me thinking as well as we got talking, can you imagine a
time where you could live in LA and go to college in Vegas, 28 minutes away? And
what that could really do? I must admit I was very much attracted to it for the
technology, but also the idea that actually mobility is not just about the forms
of transportation we use. But it's in some ways about how you can afford to be
near or live near some of what you need to do to get on in your career, get on
in your life. I felt that Hyperloop would help with that.

But going back to kind of this vision of 2032, it also made it really clear. Can
you imagine a time where maybe you're at the Staples Center in LA, and you want
to go to the convention center in Vegas? You could be there in 28 minutes. And
you could ship 100,000 people an hour over that route.

But then I started thinking, how do you move on 100,000 people who just arrive?
Literally, thousands and thousands of people every minute, just spooling out
from these Hyperloop networks. And what do they do for their last mile? And how
do you clear them out of the way? And very quickly, it became clear that you
couldn't just have people walking down the steps of the Hyperloop portal, what
they call a station, and waiting on the sidewalk for an Uber. Or thinking about
putting their hand out for a taxi. Or God forbid, grabbing an electric scooter
and figuring out how they were going to get to--

100,000 people on electric scooters will be really scary. Right?

That's right. And very quickly, it became the case that actually the challenges
that we have ahead of us in the next 10 years. It's more than just what the next
car looks like. It's more than just how can we get more people to ride buses or
more people to cycle. It's really about this connected transportation. And we're
seeing some of that today with what Google are doing with the updates to their
mapping system and how you can find it.

But even at that point, you have this connected transportation network
potentially where you could order an Uber to take you to the train, to get the
train, to take another Uber at the other end. But that's still not quite enough.
As you said in the intro, what do we do about the 71 million, potentially
Americans, who have some sort of disability? What do we do when 25% of the
people in the US are underbanked? They haven't got credit cards. Some of them
don't have bank accounts. And how do we help the four million plus visually
impaired, significantly visually impaired, that potentially can't use
smartphones in the way that some people manage to do in order to plan on
minute-by-minute of their transportation?

So I'm going to pause there, but I think that kind of gives a sense for some of
the challenges we've got to have.

It's a beautifully articulated vision of the challenge because it's not either
articulated in such crispness in four minutes or necessarily as well understood
as you're illustrating to me. So look, there are some interesting choices here.
One is the choice to ignore, what you said, and we just keep moving on a pathway
of small or large incremental steps. And then another choice, because we're
going to face this reality, is how we structurally change the way we think about
connected transportation.

And because you work in an industry with very long development curves, this
isn't like a piece of software you can change overnight. There's a sort of
physical virtual combination. So if you were king for a day-- of course, as
English people we understand that construct, right? But if you were king for a
day, what would you start doing that would mean, by the time we get to 2032, you
could reflect on this podcast and go, we actually got a lot of this achieved?

If I were king for a day, I actually would focus on accessibility for mobility.
But I wouldn't think about this in the linear fashion that we tend to sometimes
as humans. I wouldn't think that we have to do this, then that, then the other.
I wouldn't serialize all these problems.

And in reality, in the same way as we've had cloud networks, really sprung up
over the last 11 years because we've abstracted the problem out. We've had
amazing teams of people to work on all of these different problems in parallel.
Some of which have that physical element. If we went to an Amazon data center,
can you imagine the hordes of engineers that they've got working out the cooling
or working out how they get power to these computers?

If you went to visit Intel or Nvidia, they've got tens of thousands of
engineers, all focused on how you get the computer in there. If we went to
Micron or these other companies, they're looking at the memory. If we went to
Microsoft or if we engage with the Linux Foundation, we look at the operating
systems. And all of that comes together to enable millions of people to develop
applications on top.

My mental model of mobility, it's kind of like the internet. It's kind of like
this packet switch network, where at the moment, we're talking to each other on
a Zoom call. And everything that I say and everything you say in response is
going through all of these Cisco switches, goes through my broadband connection.
It goes through my Mac. It goes through your PC. And in reality, the way people
move around very similar to those IP packets.

And if I were king for a day, I'd really try and focus everybody on looking at
how they can make a difference. Not solving this giant problem, but how could we
get the people thinking-- how could we get Uber thinking about playing better
with some of their competition? How could we get the train systems and the bus
systems to interlink? Maybe from a software perspective before we even think
about the hardware.

And then how could we start really getting this data back on how people are
moving around cities? Where are the challenge points? Where are the hotspots?
And how could we democratize that data? How can we understand some of the
challenges better that the 5% of people in the US who totally rely on public
transportation? What are their challenges on a day-to-day basis?

And then if I were king, I'd get every single one of those tribes out there,
every single department of transport, every single mobile network operator,
working on how they could make it better through, in a way, collaboration, in a
way, democratizing the data, exposing the challenges. So that we can not solve
one series of problems but solve all these problems as we discover them in
parallel.

And going back to your point, I worked for a fantastic company. I love it. But
at the same point, we do have huge, great, big vehicles, manufacturing lines.
And it takes time. You can't change steel presses in the same way as they can
change a line of code. But if potentially we could find those digital overlays
to the physical world that we're describing in the way we move around,
potentially we can have incremental improvements on the way to 2032-- and mine's
3032. And rather than focus on perfection, which we're probably not going to
achieve. I'd rather have action than perfection at this point.

You're listening to Forbes Insights' Futures in Focus with your host,
best-selling author, Michael Gale. Nothing is certain about the future, but you
can be more prepared for it by listening to Futures in Focus. Find the show
everywhere find podcasts are found. And subscribe. That way, you'll never miss
an episode. Now, back to your host, Michael Gale.

As the elegance of the discussion around software is a part of something we got
to cover in a second, it's the industry at all levels, not just the auto
industry. But if you look at it from a perspective of freight, train, everything
else, is there a general understanding that the DNA needs to evolve? Or are we
still trying to fit square blocks in what are increasingly looking like round
holes and hoping it works?

You see, I'm not convinced, at this point, that it's necessarily just the
industries as we describe it. I think you have to start looking at the
motivations in each of these different areas. If we look at the mission that a
public transit agency has-- fantastic mission-- how could they be incentivized
or how could they better collaborate with a rail company with private taxi
services, with the electric scooters that we have at the moment, with automotive
OEMs, and everybody in between?

And in some ways, it's that old adage that it's, how do we evolve the people in
each of these places? So a better appreciation of the real challenges that we
have. How do we evolve ways of communicating across all of these different parts
of? What is one transportation network across this planet? And then how can we
agree the evolutions that we're going to make? It almost seems like it's a
collaboration and an appreciation of the problem, challenge before you even get
to some of the technological solutions.

The organization you're president of, does it see that mantra, that idea of
connecting knowledge and experience and challenges as being part of its mandate?
Or is that a mandate that needs to be sort of regenerated in order to bring
people together?

So COVESA is the Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance, as you say. And it is very
focused about providing this open framework for people to be able to communicate
their issues, share some of their solutions. And it aims to give people a higher
starting point in software, in systems, in use cases, and documentation, for
them to evolve their business models on top. But really, it's there as a
container to allow like-minded companies, like-minded individuals within those
companies to collaborate and go to that next stage.

And it's almost a safe playground for people to bounce ideas, which is what it
will take to make these evolutions that we're really talking about, especially
when it comes to less able-bodied people and some of the challenges, where-- how
do they call an Uber if they can't use a smartphone in 10 years time, five years
time when we have an autonomous vehicle? What does it mean when the autonomous
vehicle pulls up and they can't step down off a curb? Or they can't lift their
own bag into the trunk of that autonomous vehicle? So all of these challenges,
they're really need to be aligned.

I mean, the aim of COVESA is to think about existing cars, the existing forms of
transportation we have today. But then work with the mobile network operators,
the Verizons, the Vodafones of the world. How can they play a part, actually,
the connectivity in this future world we will live in? Is it going to be as
critical in mobility as anything else?

How can we imagine a time where even if there's only cars on the road that a
Ford and a GM could communicate seamlessly without the aid of anybody else? How
can they communicate in a common language? There's all of these different issues
that we need, which are almost service layers, they're almost hygiene functions
that you just couldn't live without. But they are essential for us to deliver
sooner rather than later because that's what the application developers, that's
what the people that will actually solve some of these challenges we're talking
about in an undemocratized world will solve.

It's interesting on two dynamics on this because there's an awful amount I've
learned, I think. One is that there's this catalyst of change, which is the sort
of software-led future. But the element for change has to go all around that is
a fundamental desire to collaborate, to win, not just to create, to try, and
have small victories in tiny worlds. Because a world where you and I could say,
we know 100% that someone who's underbanked, someone with a physical disability
has as much transportation opportunity without a premium across all the various
forms of public or private transportation, that to me is a huge societal win.
You get that done, there's a lot that can happen when you can make that happen.

That's right. And still, if I think about this, we achieve this goal that we're
talking about, where underbanked individuals, less able-bodied individuals, able
to get from A to B easier than ever before. It's opening up so many
possibilities in their life.

But the thing that it doesn't do, it doesn't close down differentiation on any
of those forms of transportation. It doesn't close down any business models. It
doesn't close down innovation that you can do on top of that. If anything, it's
opening up this entire market as well as opening up the economy that potentially
is surrounding it.

You're listening to Forbes Insights' Futures in Focus with your host,
best-selling author, Michael Gale. Nothing is certain about the future but you
can be more prepared for it by listening to Futures in Focus. Find the show
everywhere find podcasts are found. And subscribe. That way, you'll never miss
an episode. Now back to the interview.

Let's see if the auto industry-- not the auto industry. I apologize. If the
transportation industry-- auto, air, all various forms of service transport-- is
100 units now, if they were to adopt and apply this mission shift, vision shift,
and sight shift, how much bigger could the industries collectively be? If
today's an index of 100, what could it be by 2032?

Well, let's just think of it-- less so, we're giving you a straight answer. But
think of that 15% of people don't have a smartphone today. 13% don't have access
to a vehicle. On top of that, let's think of something else. The number of
people-- New York is a good one. 47% of people who live in New York, New York
City's buildings, they're inaccessible for disabled people. So even if you did
have some of these transportation things, how do they get around the cities?

So what we're saying is that there's this stack of percentages on top of your
100, that we're living in now that we could open up before we even consider the
network effect. And that's just in the US. If we think of that 15% of people
don't have access to a smartphone in the US. What might that be in Europe? Or
Asia? Or Africa? Or South America? All of these different territories.

Because this isn't a challenge that I have in Portland. It's not a challenge
that you have in Seattle. This is a worldwide challenge. And it's about a
mobility network that involves more than just ground-based transportation
potentially in the future. It's only when we start to stack all of those
together do we really get the extent.

And then as you implied earlier, we're talking a lot about people. It's
important. But think about transportation for goods. How could we better utilize
our existing transportation networks to get higher throughput? We're reading a
lot of the moments about the challenges that we have. Could all of that be
linked into one? At which point your stack of percentages just goes through the
roof?

Yeah. It really does because fundamentally, the network and the multiplier
effects are enormous. So this is a fantastic conversation because it actually
sparks us to want to do things differently. As citizens, what do we need to do?
And as leaders of industry that listen to this, what are they need to do
differently? Pitch them right now and say, OK, as of tomorrow morning, this is
what you need to do to make this happen.

So let's start on the industry side. If you're in a position, and I think about
this every day, as my role at COVESA, my day job at Ford Motor Company, it's
like, how can I make a difference? Not on what my output is, but how can I
encourage everybody that I interact with, not just in my organization but
elsewhere, to collaborate? So that we can have a starting point that we can
develop truly innovative intellectual property that solves these problems on a
faster rate all the time.

If we relate that to IT, Linux is out there, Microsoft is out there. Not every
company needs to write an operating system. It doesn't add any value. We write
applications on top. What's the equivalent that we can do for mobility? How can
we encourage people to go find the highest starting point that's out there and
build on top of it? And then when they're doing that, work out what they can
share to help other people create solutions surrounding it, which will make all
of this network, of this mobility network better than ever before.

So it's kind of a case of you, as an individual, how do you lead the team? How
do you portray the vision? How do you encourage your team to focus totally on
solving these pain points, adding the capabilities that we need for these
mobility networks? And how do you encourage everybody in your team to do the
same?

And in reality, if we translate that into to me, to you, to everybody in their
private lives, I think it's a case of highlighting the challenges that some of
my friends have and some of my friends in Detroit. One in particular, she has
this same challenge, and we've spent a long time discussing how-- actually, she
can't live a college at this point in time because the transportation from her
dorm to the classroom is more painful than her living 20 miles away and relying
on her family to drive each way.

How can we think about some of those pain points that we might be exposed to on
a day-to-day basis? And what can we do to highlight those? But having the open
discussion is normally a fantastic start.

Fantastic statement about a very personal story. And Amazon always just had the
idea that we live in a world of 7 and 1/2 or 7.7 billion markets. What you're
really saying is from a transportation standpoint, we're very linear. But
actually, every travel requirement is extremely unique. There could be billions
of travel requirements. And we should try and solve all of those, not just solve
the lowest common denominators, is that fair?

Absolutely. I would say, we solve the meta problems as opposed to as you put it
the lowest common denominators. Sometimes, we're going to have to look at these
corner cases. Do you know what, if we find the solutions to these corner cases,
for these amazing people, we'll be a better society for it.

Matt, I could ask nothing better than to finish this off with, look, everybody's
going to want to connect with you. What's the right way of people getting to you
to talk about this going forward?

So I'd love people to, especially in the industry, especially related to the
technology, to look at COVESA, C-O-V-E-S-A.global, as a website. And then
needless to say, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm sure people will find me if they want to
get in touch.

Matt, really inspiring. We're going to be running this on or around CES, where
obviously the large auto show is. Hopefully, people get to listen to it. They
will get to share it. And it may hopefully give people a revamped of how they
think about the challenges in an industry or range of industries that go further
back than 1830 because the next 10 years are going to be very different,
hopefully, than the preceding 150. Thank you for joining us today on Forbes'
Futures in Focus

Thanks, Michael.

You've been listening to Forbes Insights' Futures in Focus, with your host,
Michael Gale. Join us next time when Michael connects with another great guest,
who will peel back some of the possibilities they believe we will be
experiencing 10 years from now. We'll see you next time on Forbes Insights'
Futures in Focus.

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CADILLAC’S MELISSA GRADY-DIAS

Listen as Cadillac’s Chief Marketing Officer Melissa Grady-Dias discusses
electric vehicles and other innovations for an iconic American automotive brand
on this Forbes “Futures in Focus” podcast.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm Michael Gale, your host for today's edition of Futures in Focus from Forbes
Insights. I'm the co-author of the Wall Street Journal and Amazon best-selling
book on digital transformation, titled The Digital Helix. This is a podcast
focused on interviewing visionaries and leaders with their insights and ideas
about the world 10 years from now or what the world 10 years from now might be
like in terms of what we're doing for work, what technologies we will be using
and won't be using by then, and how our world might be organized differently,
and even what we might be eating, wearing, and doing for fun.

Welcome to this edition of Forbes Futures in Focus. May be talking about a
subject that's possibly too dear to my heart, which is the history, the present,
and really what the future opportunities look like in the motor industry, an
industry that has in many ways defined the 20th century of American industrial
production but has a very symbolic and very practical representation, frankly,
to pretty much every populace in the world. So to do that, I've invited Melissa
Grady, who is the CMO of Cadillac, a brand so old in nature and so innovative
historically that my house was built-- the garage was built to accommodate a
specific type of Cadillac vehicle, gosh, nearly 100 years ago. Melissa, thank
you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this
conversation.

Well, look, you work for what is truly one of the most innovative engineering
companies on the planet. There are maybe some slightly older ones like ABB in
Switzerland, but nobody knows ABB, but they do know who you are. The essence of
innovation is very difficult to transform from one generation to the next. It's
really easy to forget what lay behind what our forefathers did and look at the
latest shiny object and chase that. How have you guys managed to sustain a level
of innovation that at key points in your history has let you leap from one
period to the other?

I think when you look at it, and I've worked for companies where this is
definitely not true, and I think one of the things that's so interesting just
about companies is that companies really have a DNA, and they have a soul. And
when you look at Cadillac, it's in our DNA to be innovative. I mean, as you
said, we started in the early 1900s. We've been around for 118 years.

And starting with things like having interchangeable parts and having the first
electric starter to having the first power seats and airbags to today, being one
of the first-- to being the first that has truly hands-free driving, it's
something that well over 100 years has just been constant for us. And there's
been maybe a few peaks and valleys of that, but really, there's this constant
drumbeat of innovation that is just so innate to Cadillac.

Do you get rewarded on it, or is it just something that just naturally happens?
Because it's so difficult. And Apple could be innovative for a certain period of
time. Then it has a dark period. Then it gets innovative again. You guys have
had this constant additive nature of innovation. There's got to be something
unique about how you do it?

Do we get rewarded for it? I'd say innovation is very hard to get rewarded for,
and if you've never seen "The Penalty of Leadership," which is from the early
1900s, I think that it really talks about how being the innovator can be very
difficult. So I think that the people working on it are definitely rewarded for
being the first. I think that being the innovator isn't always the easy place to
be.

Sort of an understatement, really. I took an Escalade all the way, gosh, from
almost the most southern point of England-- sorry, from the US, rather, up to
Seattle. It's the most amazing five-day drive I've ever had. And I just-- to be
honest with you, I was almost shocked by the experience because it was so good.
Is it something about the way you test vehicles internally, the way people give
you feedback to it? It just is a really magical experience, and it sort of
shocks you when you get inside one.

I love that word shocks. This is one thing that I'll say about Cadillacs, and my
own first experience with a Cadillac was a rental car. And it was a surprise
upgrade, and I hadn't driven one before. This a very long time ago. And I
remember having that same feeling. I was almost shocked by how good-- it's
unexpected how good it is.

I think that it comes from, again, when we just talk about the DNA, when you
look at the design team, the engineering team, all the way through to
manufacturing, to everything, there's just this level of understanding
implicitly of what it means to be Cadillac and living up to that standard. You
know, Cadillac was known as the standard of the world for a reason, and that
permeates really everything we do, which I think-- and you said it. It's getting
behind the wheel of the car is really that moment when you just get it.

Our cars understand how to drive well. They understand you well. The technology,
it's very intuitive. It's an amazing experience. Right down to one of my
favorite things about my car is Michigan winters are very cold, and I have an
app on my phone. And in the winter, I turn on my car while I'm still inside. My
car knows what the temperature is and will warm up, both just through the HVAC,
my seats and my steering wheel, so by the time I get in the car, it's just all
ready for me. And then I start driving, and it's this magnificent experience. So
I think you really hit it. It's almost a shocking experience.

And it's funny because that's effectively what digital should feel like in any
experience around the world. It's ready when you want it, as you want it, when
and where you want it. So to be able to transpose that to a physical experience
is interesting. But you've watched this industry evolve from a number of places.
One of the things I found very interesting is really what the marketing
landscape will look like for cars, what the consumer experience is going to look
like.

Because it's not going to be the same in five years, and it's clearly not going
to be the same in 10 years as it is now. We can feel it in this one, an
incredibly transformative consumer shopping experience. And you've historically,
like every car vendor, had a very complex channel model, the rover stores that
we go to on a Saturday, et cetera. Walk us through what you see that revolution
continuing to grow and change over time?

I think it's a lot of what I was just talking about. And as we're moving--
because as a brand, we're at a big pivotal moment right now where we're moving
into looking at, what does an EV future look like? And I think this is something
that as humanity going through a global pandemic, a lot of us are really
assessing a lot of things. So as a brand, we're looking at, how do we move into
EV? How does sustainability infuse into everything that we're doing? And what is
the experience that will surround that?

And we're completely-- and like I said, I love the app that we have today. I
love the experience that we have today. Automotive has traditionally not really
been a digitally enabled thing more because of consumer behavior. And this has
been something that's been very interesting, I think, over the past couple of
months is consumers are really starting to move to digital for car shopping.
It's something that we're seeing anyway. One of the things that I think is so
fascinating, it's a very fun fact to me, is that last year, more test drives
happened on YouTube than in dealer showrooms.

But now, consumers are starting to look to us, and that's a lot of because when
we were a shelter in place, you can't go out and go see a lot of dealerships
because the fun of it is driving a car. So as consumer behavior is moving into
that digital behavior, it's going to continue to completely transform how we're
interacting. And I think we're really seeing an acceleration of that. So things
that may have been a little painful before because they weren't a focus are on
the road to becoming much easier as we basically reimagine everything.

How does that shift the relationship or the intersection between the consumer
and the physical store? Because the interaction between the rep, the consumer,
was both a great place for insight gathering back to the brand, but also had a
complex chemistry of let me guide you through this. Whereas the digital
experience is hey, do whatever you want, and I'm here to answer questions when
you want to do it. How does that balance shift the way you think about marketing
cars going forward?

Well, especially with luxury, it's that human touch that's so important. So I
think something that's been really fascinating as we're shifting to digital is
we have something called Cadillac Live. Cadillac Live is basically a one-way
Zoom, FaceTime, whatever your preferred technology is. It's a one-way video chat
with a product specialist. Think of it as your own personal auto show.

You have a product specialist who can fold up a stroller and put it in the car
so you can see. We have someone who's tall there who can show you what the
headroom really is in the XT6 third row. It's this very interactive experience.
And where I'm leading to with this is this, that what we've seen during the
pandemic is we have gone and taught our dealers how to have that same
experience. And the personal human touch on this is so important to the whole
experience.

And I think that helping to enable our dealers and to really provide the right
tools and the right best practices to have this be as easy of an experience as
possible, and this is something that I think, again, looking back over the past
couple months, it's really given us the I'll say luxury of having this ecosystem
where there's a force behavior, and you really learn very rapidly. And that's
something that we've really learned is there's still that craving for human
touch, it's just a little bit more accessible when it's digital.

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If we hadn't had the pandemic or the nature of the pandemic and the extension of
it, do you think these ideas would have been as aggressively adopted now, or do
you think it would have been one, two, three years out before, as organizations,
we'd be really committed to the what I call digital intimacy versus just send
people to the retailer?

Yeah, so I think when you say a laboratory, we actually have just had that, and
when you look at Cadillac Live, which was having really what we thought were
really good engagement metrics and really good usage metrics early on this year,
we have seen that go up five times. And that's holding true over the past couple
months. So there's been a fundamental shift in behavior. I do not think that
that shift in behavior would have come without the pandemic.

Right, and one of the classic arguments when you look at the economy, oh, it's
going from left to right. Well, no. It goes up a bit, down a bit, around a bit.
It seems to me from all the conversations we've had, certainly not by the
magnitude of five, but most people have said this. Well, I think we were going
to get there, but it may have been two, three, or four years out. So when you
start talking about a five times higher rate than successful models you had, I
think it's very interesting. Have you found dealers being comfortable doing this
as well?

I think that's been one of the biggest surprise and delights with the whole
thing. Not only our dealers, which absolutely, but internally, I think how
quickly people have pivoted and shortened timelines that we thought was going to
be two years to complete something, it's now two months. Our dealers have been
phenomenal. And this is where I go with that high touch relationship is so
important.

And I experienced it personally. I needed some car service in April, and there
was-- we were at high shelter in place at that point, and everything was
definitely no touch. And my local dealer brought a loaner to me, sanitized it
right in front of me, had a microbial cloth which sent the key over to me, and
then came back and did-- had the same reverse, and it was so easy. It was the
easiest service appointment I've ever had.

We've also seen them FaceTiming with customers, doing Zoom calls with customers,
all these different things. And we have something called Shop Click Drive, which
enables you to basically do almost your entire car deal online. And then at the
end, you just go into the dealer and sign, get the car. It's very, very easy. Or
at this point, dealers can deliver your cars. And we've seen huge adoption and
really embracing of that by the dealers because they pride themselves on their
relationships.

It has to feel strange for them, though, right? What was dealer row, a very
historical rhythm for maybe four generations, has been seismically shifted by
digital, but absolutely earthquaked by the pandemic. Talk about the future.
Let's lean out maybe 3, 10 years because I want to talk about EV as a whole
different experience. Do you ever see the ability to literally buy a car and
never having test-driven it in person?

Absolutely. I mean, I think we're seeing some of that now where the test drive
is when you're taking delivery of the car. So I think honestly, there's the
consumer desire, and then it's weirdly sometimes a state legislator issue, based
on different laws on car purchases that really, I think, are harder than the
dealers or customers enabling it. But I think people now are looking at things
like more getting everything ready online and then having some sort of extended
test drive.

And then that just leads into a purchase. So I think it's definitely possible,
and especially as you move into the future of things and EV or even AV, it
becomes a much different scenario. It becomes more about the experience of the
ride than the drive,

Yeah, and that's a very subtle difference. So the history of EV has always been
strangely converged with the history of autonomous vehicles, for good or bad
purpose. But you have some very unique views about what that vehicle experience
is going to look like. And look, having come from this extraordinary heritage of
innovation, it would be crazy not to talk to you guys and say, where are you
going to innervate the vehicle experience? So where do you think the vehicle
experience will be with you by 2030?

It's something that really pleases the mind, right? And I think we don't have
to-- we don't have to look that far to really answer this question because as I
mentioned, we have Super Cruise, and Super Cruise is actually hands-free
driving. We've now integrated lane change into it, so the car can change lanes.
You turn on the turn signal, and the car will change lanes when it's safe.
Having ridden in a Super Cruise vehicle, and I can tell you, the first couple
minutes of it are very high stress as you have to take your hands off and trust
people to do--

We live in a compulsive control society. Anything we take our hands off is
problematic with.

Absolutely. It is exhilarating and amazing, and I'm pretty sure that I screeched
when I first did it. And then as the car takes over and you learn to trust it,
which honestly happens in, like, two minutes because it's just working, and the
way that it works is right now, you keep your eyes on the road, and there's a
lot of accelerations of notifications if you are not driving.

To the point of, and I think this is one of the things that'll get to the point
I'm making because I'm going to go around the block to get there, but right now,
the car, if you're not responding, will actually, at some point, slow down and
then stop and with OnStar, call emergency services for you. So there's an
implicit it's taking care of you in there.

Now, that aside, when you're just driving, and if you're going on a long ride
and you think about your hands clenched on the wheel, and you're focusing and
you're worried about when things are distracting you, like oh, what station on
the radio? I don't like the song, whatever. And you have this heightened
awareness to it becomes the car's taking care of the driving for you, and this
is where we get into what's 10 years going to be?

This is today. The car is driving for you, and you're keeping an eye on it, but
you can change the-- you can change the radio. You can just breathe. And you
find yourself much more relaxed when you get to your destination. Now, that
technology is improving all the time. Like I said, we just added lane change
with the Escalade. As that technology continues to improve, the ride is going to
become more and more relaxing.

So as your mind starts to open up to that, what am I-- I'm getting in the car,
and I'm laying back a little. I can do some deep breathing. It's a lot easier to
pay attention to your favorite podcast. And so that's a totally different
experience than the on edge, gripping the steering wheel, making sure you're not
hitting anyone, anyone's not hitting you. It completely changes the experience.

So that psychology has been clearly witnessed in heads up displays in fighter
pilots and pilots of large commercial transportation planes. So it's actually an
established fact that it's allowed them to do much better monitoring of systems
and frankly, be more ready to react if they need to. Step forward into what that
car experience-- let's say you're driving from Green Bay to Detroit for a game.
You may well be. You may well be driving from Green Bay to Detroit for a game.

No, I'm from Chicago, so you just broke my heart a little.

I'm sorry. It was a choice of two out of four, but I had to ask it, right? So.

No, that's great. So I think when you talk about the heads up display too,
again, the Escalade has the AR heads up display. And when we look at the Lyriq,
and you can see it from the reveal that we just had, there's this dual plane
heads up display.

So it is, again, just adding to that experience when you're starting to
experience AR in your car, and it brings a little bit of joy and delight, and it
brings a little bit of relaxation because again, what you need when you need it
is in front of you. Are my directions changing? Well, now that's there. Now
what's on the radio is there. And it really enables this whole new level of
relaxation that we're not used to.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

One of the classic challenges in this area, particularly when you think about
EV, is not just the powertrain, but the whole empowered discussion. What do you
imagine people will start being able to do in cars by 2030 that we've not been
able to do by now? Let's say were more relaxed, we're monitoring systems, we're
more able to react because we're not stressed out. What other things do you
think we're going to start paying more attention to?

Yeah, I think that is a very personal question to ask anyone. What is the thing
that you wish you had more time to do that you don't because you're commuting or
traveling or whatever it is? When you think about vehicles taking on more of the
responsibility of the drive, even through something like Super Cruise, but as
that expands, just pick, what are the things that you didn't have time to do?

I think of it-- to me, my brain starts to go into I love international flights.
I love getting on a plane and sitting back and reading a book that I haven't had
time to read, maybe having a glass of wine. I start to-- that's more of the type
of experience that I start to think about than where we are today.

I agree, although I don't want to be drinking and driving. And I know it was
just a joke.

I know. I know. I was thinking too. I'm like, eh, but--

Hey, we got to have the conversation about the future. So how does the whole
power system shift between now and 2030? Do you still see gasoline being a large
part of the formula? Do you see combination engines? Do see a shift to EV? Where
do you see the shift going?

Yeah, at Cadillac, we're really leaning into electric vehicles. That's where the
Lyriq is the first of the vehicles that we're launching, and it's really our
shift into electric. I think that's where we see the industry going. And I think
from a consumer adoption and sustainability perspective, that's where
indications show that things will go.

How does it change the way you market vehicles? Because the EV experience is
really different, right? There's always that weird paranoia about mileage, which
is never actually a real concern. Just we want to have infinite fill. And also,
the whole distribution of weight and open cargo space is really different in a
car. Is it going to really radically change the way you design these vehicles?

There's two things that I'll say on that. The first thing is that I think when
you look at how we design the cars, the battery system, the Ultium battery
system that we have, which is batteries are now these pouches that we can stack
in different ways and different configurations to allow for more range, and
depending on the way that we do it, you can really have a lot more in-room
vehicle. If you don't need to have the tunnel on a vehicle, you can open space
up. So it really opens your mind when it comes to a design perspective.

And then when you talk about range, I think range is always increasing, and it
will continue to increase. So that range anxiety will really be going away. But
we're really focusing on, and as a key part of the customer experiences, what is
the whole ecosystem of charging stations? And how do we make sure that it's very
easy for consumers to go on those long drives without having to worry about it?

Either because they don't have to charge-- and I think the shift is that
charging, when you think about stopping for gas, you're stopping-- I don't like
pumping gas, but you have to pump gas, and you have to wait. Now, charging
becomes like plugging in your phone. You plug it in, and you forget about it. So
you go home, you plug it in. In the morning, you're full. You didn't actually--
aside from the two seconds to plug it in, didn't have to do anything.

As we look at the system, and is it at different shopping stops, or is it the
grocery store or wherever it is that people are going often, again, it's a
matter of you go, you plug in, and by the time you come out, you're ready to go.
You never even have to think about it. And not only just relieving the anxiety,
but not having to think about it is really where we're driving the customer
experience to.

What percent of your vehicles range-wise do you think will be EV by the time we
hit 2030? And don't do anything that causes a problem with our Sarbanes-Oxley
requirements. But I just wonder, can you give an estimate?

You know what? I think we're full-on EV. And as Steve Carlisle has coined it,
and I love this phrase, it's the end of the Ice Age. It's going to be driven by
consumer adoption. So my opinion and my vision is that that's going to keep
accelerating. I personally feel like just again, the pandemic has really changed
so much of all of our lives.

And I think one of the things that's been so interesting to me is things like
the Earth was vibrating less during when we were all at home. And pictures of
cities like LA or Beijing where you would see pre and post, and it's smog and
clear. I think that there's been-- the saying the proof is in the pudding is
coming in my head. I think we all knew that this was true, but to see it, I
believe, is going to really accelerate the adoption.

So would you say, if we were sitting here in 10 years time, you'd be 30, 40, 50,
60, 70, what would be the upward range, just to play it safe?

I mean, at some point, we're going to be 100%. I think moving towards 2030, I
see that being closer to that upper edge of that.

No, I think it's an utterly fair answer, and you will not have anybody in the
finance or the industry analyst group have a go at you. So let's talk a little
bit more about what happens in the car then. We're fully AV, or somewhat, moving
towards that inevitable trajectory by 2030. There are significant design changes
just because of the way the power systems are laid out in cars. We've had a
generation that may be actually on their second or third, maybe even fourth EV
car by then. What do you think the experiences could be that we'd be looking at
in vehicles?

This is where I get to the point of when you look at-- and it's funny. I think
back to things that we dreamt about when I was a child, like the Jetsons-type
things. But if we even look at some of the more concept cars or whatever that
have come out, these big, more square-type encasement where you can get in and
really be in a relaxing environment.

And this is more off in the future. But as we get to more of a fully EV-type
experience, you're really looking at, what is that interior open space like? Are
you all facing each other now? How does that really manifest? There's so much
that could really happen in that that it really opens your mind as to, what does
riding in a car really mean?

Right, and one of the other interesting dynamics is, of course, we talk about
this intelligent edge, all this data being computed literally on the cloud on
the edge. Do you see the car as sort of a moving data center that's constantly
computing and changing, or is that imbueding a level of external or extra
services you just don't think you're going to get loaded in the vehicle?

I think that-- it's interesting because I think there's a little bit of the
answer of both on that. I think that how the car with different radar systems
and just the way that it's interacting with the world, there's that side of it.
And then the car becoming a little bit more like anything, any piece of
hardware. If you think about your phone, what software do you want to download
to customize that for you, and what do you want that to look like?

What do you want your choreography to be, your music? All of that becomes
something that you can personalize and really through downloading things and
pulling it into your environment. So I think if you think about almost how you
customize your phone or what that's like and then put that in the car, that's
where my head goes.

Yeah, and a number of other major vendors haven't actually been as crisp as you
just said it, but they talk about car personalization. I think McKinsey had a
piece that car personalization may end up becoming 80% of what the perceived
value of the vehicle is. Do you think that's true, or do you think that's just a
slightly hysterical overstatement?

I think that that's a very aggressive outlook. I know exactly what you're
talking about. I think that there's still so much, and even I think-- even with
phones, how much does the hardware versus the software matter? So but do I think
that we're definitely moving towards personalization and more software and more
downloading things and everything? Absolutely.

And if you think about just different light choreographies or mood lighting.
Today, I want some blue because I want to feel like I'm surrounded by water, or
today, I'm feeling very red. Those types of things, I think, are things that
will become much more plausible moving forward. I don't know if I'd put it all
the way at 80%, but I think that that's definitely the way things are moving.

Good. Maybe one last question that could take a while to answer. Where do you
think we will not be going with vehicles, both the in-car experience, the
vehicle experience itself? Do you think gasoline is dying and will be less than
half the formula by there? Do you think that this new reinvigoration of the car
industry changes its growth dynamic? Where do you see the velocity of your ideas
heading?

Yeah, that's a very interesting question that you could take in a lot of
different ways. I think the biggest question that everyone has is what is the
trajectory of consumer adoption going to be, and what are going to be the
pockets? So I think as consumers are moving towards EV, Cadillac's going to be
on the leading edge of where that adoption is. So do I think the whole car
industry will be there? No, but I think that as people start to understand,
first of all, as you address all the pain points, and the main one being what
you said, is range anxiety. but there's different things that people think about
like performance and everything.

One of the most amazing things when you drive an EV vehicle is you have near
instantaneous torque. I think as you-- and when you look at the power that you
can put in these vehicles, I think that people's minds are going to start to
change, but I think there are some people where it takes a little bit longer.
They're comfortable in one thing, and that's fine. And then there's people who
are going to change more quickly, and that's very true with any technology that
we're talking about, really.

I mean, to some extent, it's funny. Having driven a lot of power gas, and then
you get into an electric vehicle, and I'm just sitting here thinking, oh, an
Escalade with electric engine. That's awesome because that's complete torque out
of a challenge. Do you think just getting people to try EV will get rid of these
problems, or do you think it's like a gradual osmosis over time?

I think it depends on the person. I think that my guess is, for the majority of
people, getting in the vehicle and trying it will change their mind. And I have
to tell you, I've always been a big EV advocate. And I can tell you, the first
time I drove a Bolt, I was amazed. And so already being a believer and loving
the EV space, that car was just-- it kind of blew my mind, which is amazing
because it's a Chevy Bolt. But it really is a mind-blowing car.

So I think that if I experience that, I think that a lot of people will. Because
I had high, good expectations for it. So if your expectations are really low and
then you go in, it's going to really be a really great experience. I think that
there will still be people that have an opinion about this is the way I like it.
And they can ride in them all the time, and they're just not going to change
their mind.

It's difficult not to. As I said, I'm sitting here going, Escalade EV. That's
maybe the greatest idea in history. It's like going, oh, peanut butter.
Chocolate. Oh, yes, I'll have that.

Sounds like a good combo.

It's a great combo, right? So I want to say thank you, but more importantly, I
want people to go and see these things. Where can they go to see, maybe touch,
feel, or buy these ideas as they come into market?

So right now, go to cadillac.com where you can find both Lyriq and Cadillac Live
because I think that those are-- Cadillac Live is really a fun experience. It
really brings a lot of fun to car shopping today. And then you can see the video
on Lyriq, and we did a pretty long Q&A as well with some executives. So I think
for now, on Lyriq, that's the best way to experience it. But stay tuned with
both Cadillac Live and cadillac.com because as we bring Lyriq to the world,
that's where you're going to find out about it.

Melissa, thank you so much for being available, for being so insightful, and I
think also being incredibly honest about what is not known about the future, but
also what is clear about where we're going to get to, just at a different pace.
I'm thrilled about where the car industry could go because it's an incredibly
important part of America's history. You, as a company, have been a key
innovator. And as I said, Cadillac standard is a term well-understood globally.

So it's great to see you guys continue to innovate this way, and I'm excited to
see how things have gone. And also, I think just sharing what you've experienced
during this pandemic as a supplier with your partners is a really good example
of what the potential upside could be for others in other areas. So thank you so
much for joining me on Forbes Features in Focus today.

Thank you so much for having me. I really had fun with this conversation, and
it's very fun to take a step back and look at where things are going because I
think the future is pretty exciting.

Yes, absolutely. I like that sense of optimism. Thank you so much.

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This is a podcast focused on interviewing visionaries and leaders with their
insights and ideas about the world 10 years from now, or what the world 10 years
from now might be like in terms of what we're doing for work, what technologies
we will be using and won't be using by then, and how our world might be
organized differently, and even what we might be eating, wearing, and doing for
fun.

I'm actually really honored today to talk not just with an individual who has
enormous structural architectural direction for Verizon, but also actually
someone who I think I'd compare to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great British
engineer of Victorian England, who really had actually started to build the
infrastructure for the 20th century as far back as 1860.

And I'm not suggesting that our guest today is that old, but what he is doing at
Verizon is going to be a remarkable indication of the future world we live in.
And so, Srini, thank you so much for being with us today.

Michael, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to join you on your podcast.

Well, let's start with the most difficult question of all. We're still talking,
and it's 2030. And I'd like you to reflect back on what has changed
infrastructure-wise in obviously cloud, AI, or parts of this since 2020. Because
the world we're going to embrace is going to be very different than the world
that's in our rearview mirror right now.

Yeah, Michael, to think about the infrastructure of 2030, we've got to put
ourselves into the users of 2030. If you look into what we're going to see in
2030 is mass sensorization. So everything that we can imagine is going to be
embedded with sensors.

You will have drones, autonomous vehicles, all kinds of things that are managing
on their own, embedded with cameras and all kinds of sensors. Ambient computing
will be prevalent, which means that we would be able to get answers to
everything we're looking for-- in some cases, predicted and proactively
delivered to us before we can even-- we require or we even think about it--
requires a mass number of compute there; AI being extremely prevalent-- lots of
decisions being made, lots of proactive conclusions being drawn based on the
amount of data available.

Now, when you look into that future, what you're going to start seeing is that
we're going to have a lot of data being generated through all these sensors that
are placed everywhere. Now, this data, if it just gets processed in between each
sensor, then you're going to miss out on this thing called collective
intelligence. It's the collective intelligence that actually is what's going to
drive all these deeper insights and the most profound outcomes.

Simply allowing your car to drive without having an accident is based on number
of sensors that are both within the car, but that's also around the car on the
roads and everywhere else. So that data needs to be taken from the sensors, then
needs to be sent to a place it can be processed. So we're talking about massive
data needing to be moved round.

Then what else comes into the picture? What else comes into the picture is that
this data needs to be processed right away. If you take an example of a car
driving at 100 miles per hour, for every 10 milliseconds it's traveling around 1
and 1/2 feet.

So when you talk about the highways and cars and drones and everything else that
are in some ways mechanically moving around based on census and data, they will
require decisions to be delivered back in a matter of milliseconds to avoid-- to
deliver safety, to avoid collisions, rather, which means we need computing. We
need networks that can deliver that lower latency.

We'll also require, because we've talking about this level of mechanization,
we'll require security. We need to ensure the right sensors and machines and
others are interacting with the right things. So security plays a bigger role.

So when you start looking at the fundamental things that you require-- and by
the way, the other thing about the sensors and [INAUDIBLE] is that you want to
embed sensors that are highly power efficient, that can be-- you put it once,
and it can run for a few years. It will require in a lower power given-- you
want to be able to-- in a battery and other efficiencies, it will be at a point
where you can deliver a very smaller sensor or another type that has a decent
amount of power density that can run for a long time.

So when you look at all of this, the infrastructure that we require for
delivering these kind of experiences is you need a good set of next generation
chipsets and batteries and others to deliver this mass sensorization. You need a
network that has high bandwidth, that's highly reliable-- because remember,
we're talking about machines moving at high speeds-- that is secure, that is
very low latency network, so that you can make decisions.

You need AI that's all over the place that can make decisions quickly. And by
the way, you need infrastructure to run that AI. That means you'll need a cloud
infrastructure spread everywhere. So when you think about 2030 and how we're
going to live, what it points us back to is that you need some of these key
ingredients to enable that future.

It's sort of, I would say, mind-blowing Because you look at-- Isambard Kingdom
Brunel's first great iron ships, which were just enormous relative to anything
before, that this has that same sense of architectural enormity. Where do you
see the tipping point between the old world and the sort of more prevalent new
world being one we experience on a sort of daily basis?

To talk about that, I think I got to give you a little bit of historical
context. Let's look at communication industry itself. And I think-- I've been in
the industry for my entire career, and I've seen the generational shifts that
occurred. But there is a-- I think there is even a profound shift that we are--
that's going to happen, and we are the cusp of it. So let's kind of talk through
it.

So far, communications have been human-centric, and I'll explain what I mean.
Before the year 2000, we were perfecting voice. Early days, started with Yahoo
and Bell, and then even move forward. It was about delivering voice, and
regarding to delivering voice across the continents. There was a time when we
made a lot of money on long distance business. Now it's no longer there.

And then we got into mobile voice, and we perfected that, too. Verizon, in fact,
was the one-- I know we had the campaign of, "can you hear me now?" And we were
the ones who delivered across the US the most reliable quality voice service.

So then that was product of 2000s. Then what happened in 2000s onwards, slowly
we've all gotten used to this idea that voice is going to be delivered reliably.
So it's no longer the quest to go on.

What started happening is then we start focusing on data. We move from the DSLs
to the fibers and cable. And again, in that case, Verizon was one of the first
ones to deliver fiber across the globe. And-- I mean, fiber-- first ones to
deliver fiber in US, but we were the first ones across the globe. And we were
delivering very high bandwidths than others.

But if you notice, 2002 until now, the race has been about how do we deliver
higher bandwidth? And then we started getting into around early 3G, and then,
certainly due to 4G, about delivering bandwidth and data to moving humans in an
reliable manner.

And what that did is that that actually spawned off a number of sectors in
technology that weren't imaginable prior to that. Mobile smartphones, Uber, and
all of these things came through that revolution. So in some ways, you can look
at it as that we were focusing on till now human-centric mobility. Where we're
getting into now is machine mobility.

What I mean by that is what is ahead of us is you have-- there's a lot of talk
about drones, drone delivery. There's a lot of talk about autonomous vehicles,
and we'll have fleets of these vehicles that will take us from wherever we want
to go to our point.

We will have all of these-- again, going back to my previous point of sensorized
and so many things put into each one of these-- they will require connectivity.
And they'll require connectivity that is even better than what we are used to
today-- means very reliable, highly reliable, high-performance connectivity.
It's got to be low latency, because you're dealing with machines. You're dealing
with things that are even at higher speeds, things that are deciding at a much
faster pace.

So we are at the cusp of that shift. We're going to go move from this
human-centric connectivity delivering reliable connections for humans to do
things, whether it is ordering Uber, to talking to somebody else, to now
delivering that connectivity to machines.

Now that is going to play both an impact both in the public world, meaning us
consuming services and getting services, but also how enterprises and how
industries are going to transform. Because once you provide this machine-level
grade connectivity, you can start transforming a lot of things.

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You're listening to Forbes Insights Futures in Focus, with your host,
best-selling author, Michael Gale. Nothing is certain about the future, but you
can be more prepared for it by listening to Futures in Focus. Find the show
everywhere fine podcasts are found and subscribe. That way you'll never miss an
episode. Now, back to the interview.

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It's actually interesting, because we finished some research on 5G in an
industrial environment. And I was shocked, actually, how high the level of
interest was in using 5G as a connectivity environment for machines. Because
historically, that never would have been the argument with 3 or 4.

And I do think there's a generational shift in how we think about the world--
cloud-based, machine-human-voice data interaction. Do you share that vision? Or
do you have a different chemical mix of voice-machine-man between now and sort
of 2030. Do you think we start shifting to a lot more autonomy? Or do you still
see that human-machine interaction being a big part of this formula?

It's a very, very good point you bring up. I think we're going to see degrees of
it. By the way, again, pointing back to 4G, I feel it transformed a lot of
consumers and customers in our what I call day-to-day, how we get productive
experiences. 5G is going to-- and what is ahead of us-- is going to be having a
profound impact on industries and enterprises from others who haven't actually
discretized to the extent that we've seen on the consumer front.

Now, so to your question, I think consumer-- on the consumer front, on our daily
lives, I think we're going to get into the human-machine integration kind of
state, meaning that there's still going to be some level of adoption concerns.
There's still going to be policy catching up to do in terms of, do you give full
autonomy to the machines? And what if something goes wrong-- who do you hold
accountable and others?

So I do expect that on the consumer front, it may be a somewhat of a slow move.
But as you move to the industrial enterprise environments, given the policies
and given the architectures that are put into these places are managed by those
enterprises and those industries, you would see a shift-- a faster shift there.

And COVID did a-- I think what we've been seeing in the digitization of the
world, COVID just accelerated that by like 10 to 100 fold. What happened in the
last six to nine months we-- looking to typically consumer habits and how techs
will change, we used to think things will take five, six, seven years-- COVID
just did that in a matter of a few months. So that is also putting in some ways
a pressure on industries and enterprises to adopt faster. So this kind of
becomes a catalyst and incentive for them to adopt the newer technology.

So if I were to give you a typical industrial environment-- I mean, if we go
into a factory somewhere-- let's call it modern factory-- what you would see is
you have the manufacturing environment that has a lot of mechanical, electrical,
and other sensors, typically, very fixed environment, meaning things are in
their own place-- fixed to the floor or ceiling or whatever. And then these
sensors through fixed wires feed the data back to some sort of a computer
somewhere close by. And then they are then connected to their enterprise
inventory systems and delivery systems and whatnot.

It's somewhat rudimentary compared to what is happening in other parts of the
world, and that is these sensors are still very mechanical in nature. There is
no collective communal intelligence. If four of them provide a different reading
does it indicate a different, what do you call, outcome? You don't have that.

But where they need to go to is their enterprise and others is that they need to
go towards-- into, what I call, intelligent environment. They need to have a
very mobile factory floors, with combination of robots and other things that
need to be in the area.

They need to have sensors that can deliver whatever input to a close by cloud
environment, that can then take all of this data and deliver deeper insights
into what is going on in the factory, and we'll call it optimize the
throughputs, or change whatever needs to changed in that environment. And it
also requires a highly reliable wireless network. Again, because we're dealing
with machines, we're talking about 1 millisecond, 10 millisecond latencies, and
we're talking about packet losses that need to be one in a billion, one in a
trillion kind of thing.

So a combination of what we see as the networks that are emerging now, 5G and
others-- and we'll talk a little bit about how the 5Gs are kind of being put
together. But the newer networks that are coming, they are designed to meet this
sort of emerging demand. And that is deliver all the things that our industrial
enterprise and machine-based environment requires, so that those industries and
those areas can become autonomous, and they can get discretized and meet the
demands that are emerging with COVID and otherwise.

It's interesting-- I mean, there's a great book by James Burke called The
Axemaker's Gift. And it really looks-- I wouldn't say accidental amplification.
But if you look at the car, the car was around before the First World War. It
took a global crisis for people to recognize that while horses are wonderful,
they have severe limitations.

The cloud infrastructure, well, gosh, started back in 1999. But it was never
really more than hosting. And I remember being the first company that ever
hosted Outlook, and people giggled at us. But it's been at it for 20 years. Has
COVID massively amplified this, or just been sort of like a turbocharged or
already fast-moving car?

I think COVID amplified it in a significant way. I think we are now dealing
with-- it's almost probably-- perhaps a different way to look at it is a normal
car to a next generation of cars, the last kind of cars. And what I mean is-- so
industries have realized that-- or enterprises-- I mean, they all fall into the
same category-- that with COVID they needed to operate on a digital front in a
much more significant, much more larger way, but with lesser amount of staff,
and staff that are indisposed because of personal reasons or other reasons.

And what they realized is that for them to adopt and drive this digitization, be
it simple, and are deploying a touch-free retail or smart retail in the retail
environments, to amplifying their delivery and digital presence, what they
noticed is that if they go traditional way of deploying things on their own,
this is going to take a long time, and time is essence here.

And so they're seeing cloud as a way-- now, cloud has got multiple forms. I
mean, you can look at cloud as the main cloud guys who provide a significant
amount of infrastructure as a service. But the cloud is also-- you can look at
the SAS providers who actually give you a solution that you can adopt in a much
faster way than you build on your own. So I think it's a step function change.

Now, everybody's realizing that cloud is the way to go. But cloud itself
inherently, in my view, can't meet all the needs if it continues the way it is
continuing, which is cloud started as, hey, you know, let's centralize
everybody's computing needs, and let's benefit from shared economies.

By centralizing, by sharing all the infrastructure-- I don't need it all the
time. You don't need it all the time. So the guys providing cloud can get us it
at an effective and efficient cost, and I don't need to maintain all sorts of
people in that environment-- I mean, the hardware or the data center folks and
network folks and all that. Let's leave it all to the cloud company, and they'll
deal with it, and they'll deliver me a service.

But look, the enterprises-- the reason enterprises evolved the way they evolved
over time, building their own networks, building their own data centers and
others, is they have very varying requirements. The applications that are
handled by Asians and call centers, the frontline people, those applications
require low latency. If things take a bit longer, average handling times go up.
And it is both detrimental to a customer experience, as well as a negative to
your business itself.

So what cloud is realizing is that it's not simply the trick of optimizing the
infrastructure and delivering savings, it is also that now you have to meet
these other different needs-- latencies. And in some cases, enterprises have the
requirement that the data has to be localized. It cannot leave the premises, or
in some cases, cannot leave certain geographies, whether it's the privacy laws
of California, or the European data privacy laws.

So when you start layering all these requirements, cloud has to start thinking
differently than how they've evolved. They have to start getting closer to the
user, and they have to start thinking about these, call it, customized
experiences that will differ geographically as a result. It will start differing
from an enterprise to an enterprise.

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You're listening to Forbes Insights Futures in Focus, with your host,
best-selling author, Michael Gale. Nothing is certain about the future, but you
can be more prepared for it by listening to Futures in Focus. Find the show
everywhere fine podcasts are found and subscribe. That way, you'll never miss an
episode. Now, back to your host, Michael Gale.

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It's an interesting discussion. I saw some virtualization process you went
through. Do you see this sort of cloud virtualization locality combination being
the common theme-- that you personalize something based on legislation like a
market requirement, but you're really going to drive highly virtualized
environment. Is that where you feel the world will go, so you can then build
your own customized layer, versus we all dump into the same cloud bucket and
just share resource?

Another good question. In fact, part of our virtualization journey is driven by
where we think the future needs are going to be, rather than purely how the tech
and the cloud world is evolving itself. I'll give you a couple of examples.

When COVID started-- March 15, by the way, was the day the world went into
lockdown, at least in the Northeast. That was the day we all went into lockdown.
And what we saw on our networks was that we saw a shift from urban office
environments to a sudden shift to a suburban residential environment, where we
saw traffic shift from one end to the other end.

And traditionally, if you're build the networks the way we've been building,
that will require placement of a massive amount of infrastructure made by
somebody else, and in a procured, deployed content would have taken months. But
we were able to shift to that literally in a matter of hours. And I think in a
day or so, we were able to shift our capacity, availabilities, to meet where the
new-- and the new consumption patterns were emerging.

And we were able to do that because what we have done is we had virtualized our
infrastructure. And that means we have the same computing infrastructure at
every point on network-- the network that is close to the cell towers that are
close to the users. Or since the data centers are now somewhat farther away from
the users, we have some load computing infrastructure, which means whatever I
can run farther away, I can also run very closely, which also means we can shift
things that we do in one place to another place.

So that is the flexibility that we saw. And we certainly-- we knew that that's
the kind of flexibility we needed, and then COVID is a perfect example where our
virtualized infrastructure fared very well in meeting the shifting demands of
the customers.

Now, if you kind of push that envelope, let's push it farther. I'll go back to
2030. In the world of 2030, you're going to be [INAUDIBLE] it's a machine
mobility world, where you have all kinds of things that are moving around, that
are interacting, that are communicating. But all of them are not equal.

Someone sitting in a car watching a movie, their connectivity can be good
connectivity. But the car driving at whatever the speed, or the drone that is
trying to deliver something at whatever speed, has got to have a highly
reliable, high-performance, low latency connectivity.

So now we're going to be in this world where there are going to be many kinds of
connectivity experiences that'll be needed. So 5G has this term called slicing,
by the way. And we will be launching slicing capability for the broader market.

And what it allows us is that it allows us to deliver these multiple experiences
with this highly flexible but single network. So now, I'll try that. So we'll
deliver multiple experiences to the multiple sets of users.

We also know that in this highly dynamic environment of 2030, you can see
demands going up and down in a much smaller time scale. We're talking hours and
days. So we need networks that are on demand, that can be instantiated,
delivered in matter of minutes, and that can scale up and down to the demands of
that particular geography, that particular environment.

So to do that, we had to look at and rethink the architecture completely. And
the way to do that is common infrastructure across the footprint. So to give you
an example, the announcement we made about, I think, a couple of months ago was
that we had deployed generic computing infrastructure-- basically a couple of
servers in Concord, New Hampshire under a cell tower, in an environment that is
both going to see extreme cold temperatures, and in summers, a decent high
temperature.

So we're going to have environments like that, and we're going to have
environments with very big data centers, where we'll have a common computing
infrastructure across the board. And our virtualized network will be able to be
deployed anywhere in this-- where we have this infrastructure.

So that means no matter where demands pop up, we'll be able to scale up easily.
We'll be able to deliver whatever experience that the customer requires. So it's
a very different way of building a network, and it's a very different way of
looking at the network as we look into the future.

Actually remarkable, really, because that's the underlying assumption we may all
have had, because we're online and we're connected the whole time. We don't
necessarily think about the agility or the structural agility of a network to
deliver this.

So you and I are sitting in a car in 2030. Hopefully, you're driving, because I
don't want you driving and watching a video. But I'm on the other side, maybe
doing some work, really some telemetry data. What sort of new things are going
to spin out of this experience-wise?

Because as I've said, you could go back to cars, the First World War. We go back
to your comments about the history of voice, and then organizations like Uber
coming out of that data period. This machine sensing world is going to throw up
whole new business models. Hypothesize with us what those models look like as we
sit there in 2030.

Yeah, indeed. I think the world-- the machine-driven world is going to create
certainly lots of new business models. In fact, the way we think is we are
creating the, call it, one of the fundamental ingredients for this machine
mobility world. And it is going to be the new applications, the new, call it,
services and new technologies that others are going to develop using these
foundational elements are the ones that are going to actually shape how 2030 is
going to look like.

But perhaps I can take us a little bit further. And I've used a lot of drone
mobility and autonomous vehicles and others as an example. But if you're looking
at 2030, services like ambient computing, meaning computing is available to you
no matter where you are. You don't need to seek like through a smartphone or
tablet is available maybe in your glasses, or in general, it's available around
you.

Combining ambient computing with all sorts of autonomous mobile things like
drones and cars, they're all going to start delivering newer capabilities and
newer services. And these services will require some way of-- let's-- or a
better example. Let's say, immersive experiences.

Immersive experiences-- maybe you're in a car, and you're consuming a 3D virtual
reality kind of a-- you're actually-- let's say-- Michael, a better example is
that you and I are talking, and I'm talking from my car. And yes, it'll be a
self-driven car. And you and I are having this virtual conference. And it's-- as
I said, it's a fully immersive conference. I mean, I can see your digital avatar
right next to me in the car, and you can see me wherever in the studio that you
are.

Very cool.

Right. So the-- now, to deliver the-- what is required is across the continent
we'll have to ensure that we're able to deliver this low latency connectivity,
where we're able to ensure that that data that's getting generated out of the
car and in all of our own virtual reality gears and others is getting processed.

And by the way, the other thing that we're trying to solve is that in the world
of ambient computing, the idea is that you and I are having this virtual, highly
realistic conversation without really wearing any gadgets or sitting in a
cumbersome environment. It needs to be our natural environment, but there you
are in your digital avatar and having conversation there, right?

To do that, you will have to move computing away. You have to start hiding the
computing away from the users, which means you've got to start putting that into
an [INAUDIBLE] cloud environment-- close enough to the user, but not with the
user.

So to go back to what sort of business models will come, the next generation of
tech will bring connectivity and cloud a lot closer to each other. And it will
require to be closer to each other because of examples that I talked
[INAUDIBLE]. You should be able to-- you need to be able to deliver these
massive bandwidths closer to the computer, so that data can be processed, and
the outcomes can be delivered back to the user in the nick of time.

So you will see data networking, cloud, and innovation in AI and others coming a
lot closer to each other. And you will actually see perhaps new business models,
where just the way we have done our mobile edge partnership with Amazon as one
of the cloud providers, you'll see more and more of these partnerships emerge
where the complementary technologies will gather together to create even more,
what I call, improved outcomes by combining each of our technologies.

So I am not going deep into the business model itself, but it's not going to be
your monthly cell phone bill that you pay. I think it's going to be the kinds of
services you consume, from whom you consume, and it will have all of this built
in to drive those kind of newer outcomes.

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You're listening to Forbes Insights Futures in Focus with Michael Gale.

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Do you see this as being the moment where fractional payment Bitcoin becomes
real? Because you say, hey, I want to do this video conference with Srini. He's
in his house. I'm in my car. You sort of almost pay as you use in capacity mode,
so it almost feels like a sliced Bitcoin sort of currency?

Or do you see other ways of this economically functioning, where people sort of
pay a service fee, and then just tap into it when they need it? Have you guys
thought about how the economics or the actual currency model of this might work?

It's highly difficult to predict how it's going to evolve, given the services
and the applications that are yet to be developed and innovated by the broader
community out there. But I would say-- Michael, I'm not-- I watch Bitcoin, but
I'm not an expert in that, and I haven't dabbled with it. But I do keep an eye
on it.

But what I would say is whether it's fractional payments or not, I think the
world will have to evolve to a point where that instant cost implications should
not be impacting customer experience. If that is on top of the customer's minds
all the time, then you know that the outcomes are not going to be very pleasant
to the customer.

So in fact, I feel-- let's say, the models today, you have-- there are some
models where when you buy a car, it comes with connectivity for the sometimes
life of the car, sometimes for the next 10 years of the car. And there's an
expectation that connectivity is going to be certain quality, and it's going to
allow you to do whatever you want to do in the car, like listen to music or
getting some safety information [INAUDIBLE].

We do anticipate that some of those models will become prevalent, where someone
would innovate a newer kind of technology or service that takes the cloud, the
network, and all the immersing experience we're going to deliver into
consideration. It's going to package all that, and provide that user as a
service.

And it is-- in a whole, that user and the service will accommodate workthrough.
Maybe there is going to be a monthly fee, and then internally we get paid, like
the way today how cloud and us work together. Or there could be a model with--
it could be consumption-based between us and that service provider.

So there are many ways this can evolve. But I think ultimately, we have to
ensure that this doesn't become a roadblock in delivering the most pleasant
customer experience.

Yeah. Because it has historically been a challenge once you start aggregating
various levels of experience, to make the process of consumption and payment
viscerally easy. I think Amazon, in particular, has been remarkable how it has
made the consumption and the payment models incredibly transparent.

And transparency, I think, will be a big part of this, so that it then becomes
part of one's natural life versus the historical relationship with billing,
where you're not quite sure what you're paying for, how you're paying it--
generally tends to induce some sort of long-term anxiety at the end of the day.

Indeed, indeed. That is, I think, is absolutely required. Look, one of the
ways-- and if I can actually tie it back to the core area we're working on. The
way we look at how we build the networks and how we are driving towards
delivering these newer experiences, we are ensuring that we are creating a
platform that will allow for the most flexibility, in terms of the kind of
technology that are going to emerge.

So let's talk through that. If you look at the previous generations of the
technology, the connectivity technology, a couple of things happened right. As I
said, we focus on, first, device. And then-- and we focus on data. But
typically, the technology focused on a single vector, either delivering more
data in a better quality voice, or delivering voice across the nation.

But when you look at 5G, we not looking at delivering a single vector, but
actually looking at delivering across multiple vectors. And that is in a high
throughput, lower latency, better security, and in a higher reliability and all
of these dimensions, and delivering a service on demand within a matter of
minutes.

Now, to do that, it requires us to rethink the way we build the networks and
actually transform on the way. And we touched on a couple of points. The way we
look at the spectrum for 5G is that we were the ones to go off to millimeter
wave. Now it's being taught by many others.

What millimeter does is it allows us to deliver gigabytes worth of bandwidth to
a single user. And as recently as a few months ago, we made an announcement that
we were able to deliver in 4 and 1/2 gigabits worth of bandwidth to a single
device.

Wow, that's incredible. I just was thinking, OK, that's unbelievably fast.

That is. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about downloading one HD movie in a matter
of seconds.

That's incredible.

So we had to look at-- knowing where we're going to be in 2030, we had to look
at, how do you create a network that becomes that foundation layer? So it starts
with looking at spectrum.

And then we looked at how we build a network-- building a dense network, so that
we are delivering these higher throughputs and the latencies that the users
require, and then connecting that with the fiber, so that moving gigabytes worth
of traffic doesn't become a problem.

And we're pushing the tech across all these fronts, whether it is millimeter
wave radios, whether it is fiber. We worked with certainly our technology
partners in showcasing that we can deliver 800 gigabits worth of-- in a
throughput through a single strand of fiber.

And then noticing that this particular experience has to be scalable on demand.
We should be delivering that-- whatever service a customer wants, whenever they
need it. That takes us back to how we build a network fully virtualized, highly
cloud native-- the entire network is cloud native. And then pairing that with
the cloud partners, with our 5G mobile edge computer, which we've already
announced five locations this year, and there'll be more coming.

But all of these, when you look at each one of these dimensions, it ties back to
creating that foundational ingredient or foundational network for the machine
mobility age, and building in enough capabilities and flexibilities so that we
can meet all the demands that we expect will start emerging in this coming
decade.

This is a very different world of the future. And actually, I want to thank you,
because you've made the language both human and practical. And unless you're
doing what you do as an engineer, it's really difficult to comprehend that. But
you're going to get a lot of people wanting to reach out to you, just because
it's fascinating. But how can people keep track, really, of this sort of journey
as you guys go through it?

To know particularly how Verizon itself is driving, and if they're interested in
knowing more about the technology of the networks that we're building, as well
as how it can help them in their own environments, I think Verizon
Communications. The comms department is also another perfect avenue.

What a great conversation. Thank you. Look, I mean, I've seen all these
announcements on 5G vRAN and the virtualized middleware and stuff. And it just--
it is to me like a tiny window into this huge world ahead.

So I think-- hopefully, we're flagrantly more optimistic because a world where
we can experience what we want, where we want, and how we want, I think, is what
the promise of technology has always been to us as humans. And as you said up to
now, it's been a lot about voice or data.

Once you get voice, data, and machines to work together, it seems to be a really
fascinating future. So thank you today for drawing a really good map back from
2030 to now, but also really thoughtful waypoints we can sort of think about as
we go through that journey.

Thank you, Michael. It's my pleasure for being here.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You've been listening to Forbes Insights Futures in Focus with your host,
Michael Gale. Join us next time when Michael connects with another great guest
who will peel back some of the possibilities they believe we will be
experiencing 10 years from now. We'll see you next time on Forbes Insight
Futures in Focus.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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