Michael Bakunin, Ph.D.

Michael Bakunin, Ph.D. has over 20 years of international experience in the automotive and telecom industries. He specializes in advanced mobility, specifically electric vehicles, mobility-as-a-service, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and autonomous vehicles.

In the past decade, Dr. Bakunin has focused on various aspects of e-mobility while working for the Renault-Nissan Alliance across three continents, and more recently for Nuvve, the vehicle-to-grid company. During his time in France, Dr. Bakunin became a founding member of the corporate car-sharing start-up RCI Mobility and managed second life electric vehicle batteries and vehicle-to-grid technology projects. While in Japan, he reported directly to Ogi Redzic, Senior Vice President of Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services at Renault-Nissan Alliance and worked on the e­­-mobility projects with partners from China and the United States, such as Didi, Uber and Lyft.

In 2018, Dr. Bakunin moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to lead the autonomous drive partnership project with Waymo on behalf of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. As part of their global Mobility Team, he was deeply involved in developing and refining their mobility strategy and conducted several pilot projects and market tests in the car-sharing and ride-hailing space involving electric vehicles. His work focused on optimizing total cost of ownership and operations for autonomous robotaxis.

As a Vice President of Strategic Accounts and Customer Experience at Nuvve, Dr. Bakunin accelerated transition to electric transportation by providing a turnkey zero-emission electric vehicle offering to medium and heavy-duty fleet operators.

In Dr. Bakunin's home country of Russia, he served in senior management roles at Mobile Telesystems (NYSE: MBT), the largest telecom group in Eastern Europe.