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

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