Charles Pelly

Ultimately, auto designers need to overcome market challenges with innovative design solutions. The automotive industry is at a turning point with environmental and economic conditions on one side and breakthrough technology on the other, so it will be fascinating to see how these design leaders envision the future.

I think there could be more experimentation if car companies didn't have to make such huge volumes. If you're making 300,000 vehicles, you have to play it safe. Ultimately, the companies want to make customized cars, and they are all working on ways to do that. Experiments with structural systems are usually about that.

The U.S. has not been big in new coaches - the U.S. is really behind Europe. It's the great passenger car and airplane that dominate American travel, and trains and buses have been much more secondary.

Well, there's no question that the law passed in 1996 was flawed. It deregulated the wholesale market, meaning the price that the utilities had to pay energy companies for power, but not the retail market.

At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.