Spotlight on Battery Challenge and Numbers

[Music] good morning today on Spotlight inside the motor vehicle battery Workforce challenge what's the plan for the future and how are these industry experts recruiting training and employing these high-tech Engineers we'll ask Mickey blly senior vice president and head of global propulsion systems at stantis and later on our Sunday morning program a conversation with Dr Felicia George her new book when Detroit played the numbers tells the fascinating history of a money-making industry that used to be illegal but is now legal and played in practically every convenience store in America and brings in a lot of revenue for state governments it's Sunday June the 2nd I'm Chuck Stokes and this is spotlight the bat challenge as I understand it's been coined uh what is it for that person that's never heard of you know it's it's the long name of is battery Workforce Challenge and there's kind of three elements to that one is battery development technology to support the transition that our country and actually around the world is going through to electrification so we want to encourage these universities we'll talk about on uh this this new technology that they're going from very traditional engineering skills in the universities to a new area Workforce is about partnering with the workforce of the future we do not have enough engineers and technicians and workers that are really ready for this new conversion that's going on in our plants our factories and our suppliers and the challenge part of it is is kind of the fun part where we actually take these 12 universities and 12 Community Schools vocational schools and put them in a competition where there really is no losers it but it really is trying to challenge them to be progressing through their challenges year year uh we reward them with trophies and cash prizes and recognition along the way so they kind of get to the point where this is encouraging them to compete hard but also in a fun manner yeah so so I imagine in terms of part of the vision is because we've all heard about EVs and we've got to move away from the gas powerered vehicles uh the world's changing us is changing lifestyles are changing but that you can't just springing on them that you really got to redo the entire infrastructure as well as the training and the learning and you got to start with the young people who hopefully will be the future of all this correct yeah as a great introduction to it is this this Challenge Series actually started 30 years ago with different emerging Technologies so if you go way back 30 years ago we're looking at what is the next alternative fuel to gasoline and we've had methanol challenges ethanol challenges we started moving to electrification in the end of 2090 or the '90s and early in the 2000s and now we've really gone full force on this transition to electrification and like you said it's this this younger generation the next generation of Engineers technicians and workers that we really want to help them progress in their knowledge Gathering but also to be able to springboard them into the industry very quickly like it's stantis where we need Engineers that really have this practical capability sure how do you how did you pick the universities the vocational schools and you even got high schools in there yeah it really was a interview process so we sent out a request to probably a couple hundred universities around North America so both Canada and us and they had to submit their proposals back to us as if they were competing for a recognition we went through those down selected with our partners from the Department of energy and argon National Labs and in the end we said we'd have 12 universities and what's unique this year is we said you know what this is more than just the engineers we want to actually partner with vocational schools or trade schools or uh community colleges so every University had a partner themselves with that community school and then they brought that forward as a proposal when you hear news reports as we all do when they say us and the Auto industry is moving too fast too soon with electric vehicles what's your reaction I think it's a simple one it's not a matter of if we have to do this that's the S side I think we all know that one the customers want some different selections or Variety in what their choices are in the marketplace there are some of our competitors done very good in this place and have put electric electric vehicles into the space and they're being consumed we have come to the market from a stellantis point of view with 28 EVS around the world we're seeing different penetrations some regions of the world is in Europe are taking them at very high rates and here in North America it's it's a mix right now sure and I think we just have to be ready for have flexibility in what we offer the customers in the end the customer has to pay money to buy a vehicle it's got to look good it's got to feel great and solve the the needs they have some of them are very environmental and some of them are very economic in their their needs all right we need to take a quick little break we'll come right back we'll talk a little bit about these batteries that are a key part of it we'll be right back stay with us Aron National Labs uh how does how do they play into all of this you know they're one of our part part so as I mentioned stantis has partnered with Department of energy and Department of energy and stantis have you are using argon National Labs which is one of the 17 National Labs in the country to be really the the program or the project um executor they're they're really taking all of the heavy lifting work for both of us to make sure that we understand how to uh work with universities how do we work with the different sponsors uh how do they facilitate any discussions we have with the administration whether it's a secretary Aries or Department of energy Administration along the way all right we've heard the controversy regarding the batteries some say they're too big uh if they catch on fire then there's a hazard uh they're expensive all of these things these are the type of issues that obviously you and the young people that are learning how to do all this technology are having to deal with um how does that play into this whole Litany of from training Workforce Development getting them ready and making it so that the average person says Okay I I now want one of those it's within my budget and it's safe your last point is very important you know the consumer wants a compelling reason to buy a car it's a very emotional discuss decision for the car electrification right now adds more cost to the car we know that it's it's an incremental increase in cost and the government there's incentives and other reasons why that uh you may want to to to purchase those what we're trying to do is get at that fundamental problem at stellantis and even our competitors of getting that cost down to a parody so there's no economic hurdle that anybody has to make I can pick a car it has a gas engine or electric uh Drive driven uh uh capable and to do that we need Engineers of the future to help design and come up with innovations that maybe some of us in the industry haven't thought of so we're using these universi as kind of incubators of coming up with really creative ideas to drive down the cost given us safety of these vehicles that's a given that we and all of my peers in the industry uh that that's a given so we start there with it has to be safe at some point along the line you've had some conversations with our former Governor now Secretary of Energy um Madam grol yes yes we have what what happens in those conversations well she knows Michigan and knows this industry very very well but she also now has to deal with the national footprint yeah the good news is she's a supporter of many elements and you've seen her on your shows and other shows she's been in this studio a whole bunch of times of her Workforce Challenge and I think there's some announcements here recently where she talked about we need to get our Workforce ready for this whether it's our technical operators in the plants or it's our Engineers designing it or our supply base so her office has been extremely supportive of this and in fact when we went for it together with the Department of energy about two years ago with the concept it was a yes it wasn't let's debate it was a yes let's figure out how to make this work yeah talk a little bit about the judging competition and how does that work there's a year one year two and year three year one is purely analytical they're applying all their engineering skills of Designing and developing this in an analytical way no parts yet year two is we give them the parts it's like the candy stores opened up and they get to pick all their pieces and parts we're actually you know sponsoring them with a vehicle so we have a ram PR Master how about say they nice Ram prom Master for three years that would have enticed me to maybe change my major when I was in college but too late so so we give them the hardware and then there in the year three they actually make it from a customer acceptance so at the end of each year we have a we have a competition two or three days just recently we had the end of year one in Chicago bring all the universities and they have to actually present to judges from the industry have about 20 or 30 judges judge them on their technical capability their marketing plan even K through 12 so we actually encourage them to go out and teach K through 12 this technology and they actually we have a judging uh point that they give them to how well they're getting it Outreach into the community and then what is their solution year two they're actually going to be judged on the hardware if it meets their year one designs they get bonuses for good design work and good Solutions and they actually have some negative points if their Solutions didn't work out just like my Engineers find out every time when they make a mistake they got to recycle and redo we do the same thing for them how lucrative of a business will this be for engineers of the future well Engineers are in hot demand I mean if you really look at what's going on in in the educational system Engineers coming out are in high demand we're looking for best talent our competitors here in the Detroit area I won't say it's a war for talent I've used those heard those words but it is really a hunt for talent that we need to find they make between 10 or 15% more in their starting salary than students that don't have an experience like this how did you get involved in this challenge I know you have an engineering background well it started a long time ago actually my when I was in college my senior design project was one of the first ones at Georgia Tech where I went to school uh we had a competition like this but it was a small scale uh remote control vehicle that actually had to design and build and get judged on when I was at General Motors uh we were partnered with the Department of energy and did the same competition 2005 I got involved and I got hooked I mean the energy of these kids that are coming in uh to these competitions and seeing the future generations of what we're trying to give to society and by the way I don't care if they work for stellantis I want them to work in the industry so it's really kind of a giving back of of what I've learned and I've been had experience along the way and santis is fully supporting this also is we want these future technicians workers and Engineers to contribute to uh us uh Improvement in this area we've had thousands of Watchers of the competition we just had in Chicago uh seeing what they're doing in real time all right Mickey BL thanks so much for coming in sharing this information we'll get you back you know cuz I want to know a couple years from now where you at from where you are today very good Thank You Chuck and with Spotlight returns I'll have a conversation with Dr Felicia B George she'll be talking about her new book about the history of playing the numbers in Detroit we'll be right back Dr Felicia George she is born and raised detroiter she has her PhD in anthrop ology from Wayne State University and she's Our Guest today on Spotlight uh but she's here not so much to talk about Academia but a brand new book that you have uh called when Detroit played the numbers and the little subtitle in here is gambling's history and cultural impact on the Motor City interesting title what made you want to write about this period that has gone by the wayside you know it's funny ini I was not even going to talk about the illegal Lottery and I was just having a conversation with my desertation I'm working on my PhD at that time and I have a conversation with him and I just happened to mention this illegal Lottery and how it was still active all these years later and it just intrigued him and the more I told him about it the more he asked me about it and he said I really want you go home and think about actually doing your work on this and when I got home and I realized the history that you know my family and my neighbors had and just how much people love the the topic that's what kind of pushed me to do it so there might be a few people out there who don't know what you're talking about when you say played the numbers so what is that so playing the numbers is simply just a game of chance it is the illegal Lottery um the today's Daily Three is a carbon copy of it and so it came about in the 1930s and for a long time it was illegal before the lottery legalized it and so it's just simply a game where you choose three numbers and hopefully what you choose are going to fall and you're going to be a big winner what significance did this industry I I call it an industry uh half for the africanamerican community in Detroit it was powerful um you have to think about the time period the 20s 30s 40s we had segregation discrimination red lining uh blacks to be honest couldn't get you know certain jobs couldn't get loans for businesses um couldn't get loans for housing and these numbers men who actually ran this illegal Lottery what they did was they became very rich but they put the money back in their Community they paid for scholarships for students they um gave funding for businesses uh built houses when houses were not being built for um blacks in Detroit so it was a powerful industry that really really helped black detroiters economically and they were respected citizens respected leaders and even though they were in an illegal business and everybody kind of whispered about what they did and who they were right yeah they did I think a lot of it had to do with reciprocity I think the the people that were the leaders of this they knew they had an oblig and they called themselves racen they said we're racen we're going to make sure we take care of our community and so they took care of the community and the community took care of them by playing the numbers and those pennies nickel and dimes funded so many important things throughout Detroit's history it was really thought of as being a black game uh the Italian mafia other groups they were doing their thing but they were doing it with the legal boots and so when prohibition ended and they realized how much money was being made they were like we want a piece of this too and so it went from being really a concentrated black activity so you saw all the different ethnic groups starting their own uh illegal lotteries wow did blacks get pushed out eventually from this you know not here in Detroit it was really really interesting it took a long time before it happened uh you go to New York it happened very very early the mafia came in and took over you go to Chicago it happened pretty early but Detroit was May mostly able to hang on to its black illegal numbers operations for a number of reasons um one of the people that was considered one of the fathers of the legal Lottery here he had a lot of Social Capital he was Joe Lewis's U manager uh and we didn't have the kind of violence that you saw in other um cities and so the um black numbers men really held on for a long time running their own organizations you talk about a a mayor of Detroit that was supported by the clu clux Clan yes how did that play into this so what's really interesting is um a lot of people don't know the clan was was a they had a stronghold here for a minute in the uh 20s and so Charles BS was the mayor he was coming in right when the Depression was hitting hard and the clan backed him he was a con conservative um he uh represented the values that they were aligned with um he never said that he was a part of the clan but they made sure he was elected so he gets elected and one of the things that he promises are some Jewish numbers men that you know what I'm going to help you guys out I'm going to make sure you take over of running the numbers and he was elected on the platform that he was going to invise and he didn't and so he was end up being recalled uh within 6 months of being elected uh mayor wow that's short term okay we've also seen some other short terms but we don't have time to get into all that we're going to take a quick little break and we'll come right back with some more questions to Dr George stay with us was it hard to get people to talk to you about something they knew but they knew it was illegal so they didn't want to talk about it oh yes so there were some people that flat out told me nope I'm not going to talk about that but I had an in um my husband worked for General Motors and numbers is huge in the plant and uh he knew they played big in the auto oh they still do uh they still do okay and so he was trusting he had a relationship with my husband he trusted him enough and so he became one of my informants and that kind of opened the door for me all right um black bottom in Paradise Valley what role did they play in this well you know what they received most of the money that came from the numbers men I mean it was uh black Bott in Paradise Valley where the businesses were where their homes were and so um the money that the numbers man poured into the community was really poured into those communities they started insurance companies uh they funded a bunch of restaurants some nightclubs and so it it was a the foundation of a lot of stuff that happened it it was a major employer yes it was it was think about this think about you go to college and you're a young black man or a young black woman you want to be an attorney uh at that time you were not going to get hired you would go to school and become an attorney and guess what the best you could do is maybe be a porter uh and so so these numbers men had a really great job because what they would do is they saw that need and they would give these professionals jobs as attorneys as secretaries as you know uh accountants and so it played a major role in the employment for blacks in Detroit uh women played a major role in this correct yes how so so it's funny um we always talk about the numbers men and you hear about that but there were women behind the scene uh in the book I talk about one woman Ida Watson she was a forced to be work uh reckoned with in the 19 uh 20s 30s and 40s uh there is a chapter dedicated to another um lady who ran her own numbers business for a little more than 30 years Fanny Davis uh and she really took care of her family and was able to push them into a middle class St status and take care of her community as well and so women may not have been in the Forefront but they were definitely in the back pushing making sure that they had a role in this John Roxboro okay who is he so he is Joe Lewis's manager there would be no Joe Lewis Without John Roxboro he came from my privileged family and I call him the father's the father of Detroit numbers because he's the one that brought numbers back to Detroit in the late 1919 1920s and he was the one that really um got people on board to play the numbers and other numbers men kind of emulated him those pennies nickels and dimes that he made it funded Joe Lewis there would be no Joe Lewis and all the great things that Joe LS did for race relations being the first true black American hero if it were not for John Roxboro why should we put importance on this story from a historical standpoint because it's it's a piece that has been missing um we know a lot about you know the Great Depression but we don't know how the numbers man stepped in and when the government failed uh the black community and there was no jobs and no food they stepped up and they took care of it we know that there were great businesses like Great Lakes Mutual insurance company but we don't know how that insurance company was funded it is just so many things that the numbers they made possible from the nwacp to the Urban League that it was these numbers men that made sure this stuff happened and as we keep moving forward in history this story this important industry is dying because um the people that know it are passing on the book once again is called when Detroit played the numbers by Dr Felicia George and how does this play into your anthropology uh so I get that a lot that's exactly how it plays into it you know it's about studying Mankind and its culture Dr George final question and and maybe I won't say it's the most important question but maybe it links it all back together again so this was in the illegal business 20s 30s 40s 50s whatever uh now state of Michigan uh gets a decent portion of their budget because people are playing Lottery legally and we got all different types out here you've mentioned some of them already um talk about this change or what was illegal to now what is very legal um and why this change has come about you know I really think that that's one of the most fascinating parts of this book and the research I did for so many years Society um the media uh government police they villainized it oh you know it was going to be the end of family values it was illegal it was something horrible it was taking money from poor people it was just horrific of exploting them uh and then slowly but surely they realized it wasn't going anywhere it didn't matter how many raids they took people had an appetite for it and they liked playing the lottery and the old becomes new and what happened was you know back in the 1800s when lotteries first hit this is how the United States was built was on money from lotteries I mean it's it's a fast way the uh people hope yes it did fast way to generate money you didn't have to raise taxes people were hopeful they they thought this was the how they could get their American dream and so here comes the 70s and guess what state of Michigan needs some money and they realized this is a fast easy way to do it and so within a year you you re the stories or where they're saying it was horrible and it was criminal so now all of a sudden you got to be in it to win it and so you see all this now advertising encouraging people to play this game and that it's doing a good thing for the community so it's really fascinating to watch how that attitude changed over time kind of like uh all the people who went to jail for smoking marijuana and now uh every other Corner yep has can place lots of parallels all right Dr Felicia George thanks so much for coming in and joining us and uh good luck with the book uh the second book going to be about what I'm looking at the Detroit police department and Criminal Justice System here in Detroit the history of it mm oh that should be fascinating wow special thanks to Mickey Blye and Dr Felicia George I'm Chuck Stokes we'll be back next week with more newsmakers in the spotlight we hope you have a great week [Music]

2024-06-03 06:49

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