Car designer working to free Americans from needing to own a car

I’m Dan Sturges, and for 40 years I’ve been working on a simple but unusual idea: that Americans shouldn’t have to depend on owning a big car just to live their everyday lives. I’m a car designer who has loved cars—but even more, I now love designing the right car for the right trip. Most of our daily travel is short and simple, yet we all rely on five-seat highway machines that sit parked 97% of the time. That oversized “car ownership culture” has quietly become a kind of disease—hurting our health, our wallets, our communities, and the climate.

Back in 1988, I quit my job as a GM car designer to create something almost no one thought was possible: a small, enclosed, electric neighborhood vehicle for short trips. I didn’t want just ideas—I wanted real vehicles on real streets. So I started a company, years before Amazon, Google, or Tesla existed. By 1995, our team introduced America’s first Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV), and even helped NHTSA create a brand-new class of vehicle—the LSV. Our little NEV is still being built today. (Link to GEM car).

But my path wasn’t easy. Competing with an industry of 21 giant (automobile, oil, and insurance) companies making $3.5 trillion a year is no small challenge. After an early bankruptcy, I shifted my focus to the bigger puzzle: how smarter streets, smaller vehicles, and new mobility options could actually replace the need for car ownership—especially in the thin, spread-out cities where 200 million Americans live. I’ve spent nearly three decades working with UC Davis and other partners to explore how a “transportation mesh” of right-sized vehicles could make everyday travel safer, cheaper, cleaner, and more fun.

Along the way, I’ve weathered my own storms. I’m bipolar, which has pushed me to moments of incredible creativity and also moments of difficulty. (Wired magazine wrote about this). In 2025, I underwent quadruple bypass surgery. So this LA2B walking tour is also my “Bypass Tour”—a way to strengthen my heart while helping others repair the heart of our transportation system.

Today, as autonomous vehicles emerge—not aggressively from automakers, but from the tech world—the door is finally opening for the small, smart, right-sized vehicles I’ve worked on for decades. I understand better than anyone I’ve ever met how we can shrink many of our vehicles safely, and how to redesign our streets, paths, and communities to support this shift. My 40 years haven’t been wheel-spinning—they’ve been preparation for this moment.

We can’t wait for big auto to fix things. They’ve shown they can’t. But with public awareness, tech innovation, and smarter design, we can finally move from the oversized past toward a healthier, cleaner, more human mobility future.

And we must—because over 70% of us know the climate crisis demands rapid progress.

This is the time for traction.

This is why I’m walking LA—city by city, block by block—on my LA2B Tour.