GlobalAutoIndustry.com’s latest Audio Interview “Automobility 2.0: Connected, Electric & Intelligent – A China Perspective” (2nd of 3 part series) with Ron Hesse features Bill Russo. Bill is the Founder and CEO of Shanghai-based Automobility Limited, a strategy and investment advisory firm helping clients to create the future of mobility. His over four decades of experience includes 15 years as an automotive executive, including over two decades of experience in China and Asia. He has also worked 12 years in the electronics and information technology industries. Bill is also currently serving as the Chair of the Automotive Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
Audio Interview Guest
Bill Russo, CEO
Automobility Limited
To listen to the 1st of the 3-part series
“Automobility 1.0: The Shift from Ownership to Usage – A China Perspective”,
please listen here.
In the 17-minute Audio Interview, Mr. Russo discusses these questions:
• To ground the discussion, how do you define the Connected and Electric era—and what truly distinguishes Intelligent Connected Vehicles, or ICVs, from earlier generations of connected cars? And to press on that point, what specifically separates ICVs architecturally and functionally from the connected vehicles we saw in the last decade?
• What conditions enabled China to take such a commanding lead in Automobility 2.0? You often talk about “China Speed.” How did that way of operating accelerate development cycles compared with global OEMs?
• What is the Tier 0.5 concept, and why does it matter so much in the software-defined vehicle era?
• And how are OEMs adapting their organizations and vehicle architectures—from domain controllers to centralized computing—to integrate these Tier 0.5 players?
• How do connectivity, central compute, OTA capabilities, sensors, cloud platforms, and AI come together to define Intelligent Connected Vehicle performance?
• How have expectations shifted around UX, UI, OTA updates, ADAS performance, and digital ecosystem integration?
• Which capability gaps in the 2.0 era pointed directly toward the need for Automobility 3.0, and how did ICV infrastructure set the stage for what comes next?
About Bill Russo:
Founder & CEO of Automobility Limited
Bill is the Founder and CEO of Shanghai-based Automobility Limited, a strategy and investment advisory firm helping clients to create the future of mobility.
His over 40 years of experience includes 16 years as an automotive executive, including 19 years of experience in China and Asia. He has also worked nearly 12 years in the electronics and information technology industries. He has worked as an advisor and consultant for numerous multinational and local Chinese firms in the formulation and implementation of their global market and product strategies. Bill is also currently serving as the Chair of the Automotive Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
In his current role, Bill advises start-ups, corporations and investors on how to maximize their participation in China’s Automobility Revolution. In order to achieve success, he believes they must expand their focus from the product (the automobile) to the utility derived from the product (“automobility”), and create a business model and digital ecosystem optimized to provide digitally enabled solutions for both car owners and mobility services users. Bill was previously the regional head of Chrysler in North East Asia, where he successfully negotiated agreements with partners and obtained required approvals from the China government to bring six new vehicle programs to the market in a three-year period, while concurrently establishing an infrastructure for local sourcing and sales distribution. Mr. Russo has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University in New York, and a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Mr. Russo is a highly sought after opinion leader on the development of the China market and the automotive industry.