The best part about attending this month's Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Michigan, was picking up the industry buzz.
Every year, smart people take the stage a few hours' drive north of Detroit to give presentations during the dayslong MBS, which has been hosted for years by the Center for Automotive Research.
But if you're a regular attendee, you know it's really the buzz in the hallways and coffee breaks and evening receptions that provide a barometer of what auto industry executives think, what they know, what they want and sometimes even what they quietly fear about the business' near-term future.
This year — no surprise — the biggest buzz around the gathering was the worldwide shift to electric vehicles. EV sales outlooks, EV battery technologies, EV charging networks and the technical challenges entwined in all of it.