Buttigieg on the ‘Most Transformational Moment for Transportation’

• The U.S. is in a historic mobility transformation and must act decisively to stay competitive. 
• Infrastructure is more than transportation — it is a workplace and a foundation for community life. 

• Innovation depends on partnerships among industry, government, and academia. 

Speaking at the 2026 Detroit Auto Show, Pete Buttigieg, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, shared how his experience as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and later as the U.S. Secretary of Transportation taught him that innovation is not a competition between government and industry; it is an intersection linking industry, academia, and government. 

Describing the last year of trade policy changes as “existentially disorientating” as they upended planning cycles and jeopardized long‑term investments, automobility companies are struggling. Despite the instability, Buttigieg expressed confidence that the American market still has an opportunity to set the pace for global mobility innovation. 

“We don’t need nostalgia about the auto industry because we are living in the most transformational moment for transportation since the combustion engine was developed,” Buttigieg said.  

While adoption of EVs has been hesitant, he shared that their mere existence represents a permanent technological shift; policymakers cannot “put the toothpaste back in the tube.” This poses the question: Is the U.S. able to lead that shift or watch global competitors define it? 

Buttigieg also added that America must approach the transition with equal seriousness if it intends to “own the 21st Century just as much as we did the 20th century,” but it won’t happen on its own. 

Thinking about what the future would look like, he noted that the public will notice vast differences in land-use patterns, vehicle designs, and even ownership compared to the past. During his time as secretary, he noted that federal regulations still dictate mirror placement — even in driverless vehicles — reflecting outdated assumptions and can pose risks to both the nation’s safety and competitiveness. 

“A lot of the people making decisions about technology in our country, I fear, do not understand the technologies that they are regulating or proposing to make decisions about,” he warned. “People expect from their leaders a level of literacy around these technologies that are going to shape so much about our day-to-day lives, not to mention our economy.”

Reflecting on his service in the U.S. Navy, where he drove officers and equipment along dangerous routes in Afghanistan, he said the most important lesson he learned was the role of trust. No one cared about politics or personal background; they cared about competence and preparedness. Trust, he said, is the operating system of society and innovation. Whether deploying autonomous vehicles, modernizing infrastructure, or integrating AI into daily life, trust is the invisible infrastructure that makes progress possible and innovation is cultivated. 

“Nothing works without trust, even the most basic things,” he said. “If that sounds like an extreme or exotic consideration, consider the fact that every time you’re at a green or a red light, you are trusting. You’re making a life-or-death decision to trust your personal survival to a whole bunch of people that you’ve never met, because your survival depends on whether everybody follows the same convention of the stoplight.”

The conversation turned to infrastructure, which Buttigieg described not merely as a way to move vehicles but as a workplace, a foundation for community life, and “the modernity of a country.” Rural areas, he noted, experience disproportionately high fatality rates due in part to poor infrastructure. 

When asked how policy can best support innovation in both large cities or rural areas, he encouraged leaders to “look beyond federal” frameworks. Local governments are often the most effective innovation laboratories.  

Approaches such as tactical urbanism, which rely on low‑cost temporary materials to test new designs before building permanent infrastructure, allow communities to experiment quickly and safely. 

In closing, he stressed that transformative ideas in transportation rarely begin with top‑down directives; they emerge from creative, bottom‑up collaborations guided by open‑minded local leaders and supported by academic expertise.