Cars drive our lives as much as we drive them. A symposium at the University of Virginia, "The Car of the Future / The Future of the Car," will examine that evolving relationship during U.Va.'s Family Weekend, Nov. 5 and 6.

Representatives from such diverse U.Va. disciplines as engineering, architecture, German studies and nursing, as well as professors from the Darden School of Business, will discuss the place of the car in our changing world. Visiting speakers include:

• Futurist Jeremy Rifkin
• Burkhard Huhnke of Volkswagen's electronics research lab
• Christopher Borroni-Bird, director of advanced technology vehicle concepts at GM
• Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon, co-authors of Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainablity

Most of the sessions are free and open to the public.

On-site exhibits of hybrid and electric vehicles, including the Volkswagen Touareg, Chevy Volt and a Sanyo electric bicycle, will give a hands-on view of new technologies.

On Friday, GM’s Borroni-Bird will share his original, integrated view of urban mobility, which envisions electric cars that are fully integrated with the environment and the smart grid through electronics. He presents this view in a new book Reinventing the Automobile, co-authored by William J. Mitchell and Lawrence D. Burns. A panel entitled “The Fuel of the Future” will then address the key question: How are we going to power the car in a responsible way?

One of the world's leading thinkers on how science and technology are impacting and remaking our economy, workforce, society and environment, Jeremy Rifkin will speak Saturday morning.

He is a best-selling author of 17 books, including The Hydrogen Economy, The Empathic Civilization and The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream (winner of the Corine International Book Prize for the best economic book of 2005).

He is a senior advisor to the European Union and several European heads of state, as well as the principle architect of the EU's "Third Industrial Revolution," a long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security and climate change.

Rifkin will explain how a shift to next-generation electric or hydrogen cars is the fifth of five key pillars needed to support a post-carbon Third Industrial Revolution, a not-so-distant era in which millions of buildings and vehicles will each produce distributed renewable energy, store it in hydrogen or batteries, and share it across an intelligent grid much like we now share digital media across the Internet.

Following Rifkin's talk on Saturday morning at 11:15 in Clark Hall 108, three U.Va. faculty members – Darden School of Business Professor Mike Lenox, director of Darden's Batten Institute; Kim Tanzer, dean of the School of Architecture; and Audrey Snyder, professor of the School of Nursing – will discuss Rifkin's vision from the perspectives of business, architecture and health.

“The symposium will explore hydrogen, solar and electric energy as potential fuel sources for future automobiles, but we’ll also examine the role of cars in the societies of the future,” said Darden Professor Peter Debaere, a co-organizer of the symposium. “We’ll ask questions like: What does it take to build sustainable cities and societies? Should we minimize the role of cars altogether? What does history teach us about the relationship between social and technological change?"

Such issues are addressed in the 2005 film "The Nature of Cities," co-produced by Timothy Beatley, Professor of Sustainable Communities at the U.Va. School of Architecture; Colorado-based filmmaker Chick Davis; and Wulf Daseking, the director of city planning in Freiburg, Germany. A showing of the 45-minute film on Nov. 6 at 7:30 p.m. in Clark Hall, room 108, followed by remarks from Daseking, will conclude the conference.

More information, including a complete conference schedule, is available at the Center for German Studies website.

The symposium is supported by the Center for German Studies, the Center for Global Initiatives at the Darden School, the School of Architecture, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Nursing, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the College of Arts & Sciences, the Page-Barbour Fund and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

For more information, contact communication@darden.virginia.edu or a member of the Communication team.