When Swamy Kotagiri considers whether true autonomous driving will ever be achieved, the CEO of Troy-based Magna International uses a comparison to COVID-19.
“If someone had told you that the industry would be able to come up with a vaccine in a matter of months versus years, we wouldn’t have believed it. I believe in science, and I think we will get there,” Kotagiri told the Detroit Economic Club via Zoom on Tuesday.
He noted that adaptive cruise control and a host of other driver-assistance technologies are already proliferating.
Kotagiri, 52, is relatively new in his role, becoming CEO in January, replacing Don Walker, but he’s been a part of Magna for 21 years, previously serving as president. The company is a big player in the auto industry as the largest supplier in North America and the No. 3 supplier globally. It operates in 28 countries with more than 320 manufacturing facilities. Thirty-five of Magna’s 58 U.S. facilities are in Michigan, where more than 9,000 of its employees work.
Kotagiri, whose first name is actually Seetarama, led the company’s COVID-19 task force, and he expressed pride in what the company was able to accomplish. Because of its wide footprint making seating, powertrains, transmission and other things, the company took what it learned in different areas of the world, starting in China, and applied it as the virus spread.
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“COVID-19 was a black swan event. Nobody could have prepared for it. All you could do was depend on the resilience and the ability of the company to react,” Kotagiri said, noting that Magna’s focus was on employee well-being and safety.
Overcommunication helped keep different parts of the organization on the same page, he said.
Kotagiri addressed the semiconductor shortage affecting auto production at Ford, General Motors, Stellantis and other companies. He said that while his company hasn’t seen a significant impact, the issue would remain a challenge for all players at least through the first half of the year, possibly longer.
Kotagiri said that If someone had asked 20 years ago if issues with the microchip industry would have stopped auto production, “we wouldn’t have guessed it, but here we are.”
Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence. Become a subscriber.