010: Toyota’s Breakthrough with Blockchain and Autonomous Cars with Chris Ballinger

Published: July 27, 2017, 7:53 a.m.

Chris Ballinger is the CFO and Head of Mobility Services at Toyota. Specifically, within the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) which leads Toyota’s efforts around autonomous vehicle technology – self-driving cars.

 

Chris previously worked at the White House and was a Senior Vice President at Bank of America.

 

He is also a formally trained monetary economist (which made for quite an interesting conversation).

 

In this episode, we discuss:

 

  • How Toyota plans on using Blockchain, AI, and Machine Learning to make its vision of fully autonomous vehicles, a reality
  • The different functional areas where Blockchain would play a pivotal role
  • How Nick Szabo’s 1998 paper on smart contracts, was the perfect primer for Chris