AutoMobility Advisors attended the ITS World Congress 2025 in Atlanta, held August 24 through 28, one of the most influential stages shaping the future of transportation and mobility. The event brought together thousands of leaders from around the world across government, industry, and research to discuss how artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and autonomous technologies are moving from vision to practice.

AI was everywhere. Not as a distant concept but as the backbone of resilience in transportation. Speakers highlighted Las Vegas cutting incident response times by twelve minutes, European rail networks extending lifecycles through predictive maintenance, and U.S. projects using smart monitoring to detect bridge stress before failure. Each example underscored that AI is already embedded in safety and recovery, and no longer an experimental tool. And still, amid the optimism, one word returned again and again: trust. If communities do not believe systems are transparent, reliable, and designed with their best interests at the center, adoption will stall. Trust is not a supplement to innovation. It is the foundation.

Multimodal mobility captured imagination as well. Taipei is building journeys where metro, bus, and bikeshare operate as one. Las Vegas is connecting transit with rideshare to create continuity for passengers. In Atlanta, Georgia’s Cumberland Hopper shuttle gave people firsthand experience with an autonomous pilot and revealed valuable lessons about safety, ride quality, and user confidence.

Another strong theme was digital infrastructure. Verizon’s spectrum and network investments, European V2X projects, and the application of digital twins in Auckland showed how rapidly physical and digital systems are converging. Yet progress will not be automatic. Interoperability challenges, fragmented procurement practices, and uneven policy remain barriers. Without shared standards and alignment, the path to scaling will remain slow.

Finally, the human factor. Technology cannot succeed without people trusting and embracing it. The Human Machine Interface will determine how quickly autonomy advances. If interaction feels confusing, intimidating, or disjointed, confidence will fade. If systems are intuitive, supportive, and user centered, adoption will accelerate. AutoMobility Advisors is preparing a white paper dedicated to this very subject because getting HMI right is crucial for scaling autonomous driving responsibly.

Learn more: AutoMobility Roadmap Newsletter on ITS World Congress 2025.

Our participation in ITS World Congress reflects our broader commitment. As fractional executives, we bring these insights directly to clients. We stay in the rooms where decisions are debated, making sure our leadership and knowledge remain current. This is how our partners benefit from the most up to date strategies and networks in the mobility industry.