Walter McManus Director watsmcm@umich.edu

Walter S. McManus, an expert on alternative drive powertrains and automotive forecasting, was recently appointed Director of OSAT. His business career includes nine years at General Motors where he developed models to forecast vehicle sales, created visual information tools to stimulate new product development and spent a year as a manufacturing supervisor in a component factory. He joined J.D. Power and Associates in 1999 as Executive Director, Forecasting and Analytics. While at J.D. Power he developed a variety of forecasting auto sales models in most markets worldwide and at GM, he conducted research on new automotive technologies and their impact on society and the environment, the market potential of hybrids and diesel-powered vehicles, and automotive product and brand portfolio strategies.

McManus earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Louisiana State University (LSU) in 1977. He was awarded his PhD in 1983 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).He was awarded the Sidney Stern Fellow and a Foundation for Research in Economics and Education Fellow. His fields of specialization were econometrics, industrial organization, and labor economics

A member of the American Economic Association (AEA), the National Association of Business Economics (NABE), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and the Society of Automotive Analysts (SAA), he is an economics research and analysis executive with a record of influential research and a history of leadership accomplishments. He is regularly invited to speak to industry, policy, and research organizations. He is widely cited as an authority on the automotive industry in the business and general media.