The president and chief executive of the American Center for Mobility is stepping down just as the Willow Run proving ground near Ypsilanti shifts into a new, higher-octane phase focused on highway-level autonomous testing. His exit lands at a moment when industry partners are staging more advanced demonstrations on ACM's test environments and the site is moving from construction mode into commercial validation work.
Crain's Detroit Business reported yesterday that Reuben Sarkar will leave his role as ACM's president and CEO, noting that the leadership changes line up with a growing slate of commercial tests. Crain's Detroit Business also reported that Visteon, one of ACM's founding members, completed what it called the first highway-autopilot test drive on the Willow Run highway loop.
Sarkar, who joined the organization in 2020, has pitched ACM as a crucial bridge between lab prototypes and road-ready systems. "What is happening at ACM today is a reflection of where the entire transportation industry is headed," he said in a March press release, per PR Newswire. According to ACM's website, the campus is increasingly used for interoperability tests and demo days that pull together suppliers and automakers for higher-speed trials.
Visteon's highway run points to testing at scale
Crain's Detroit Business described the Visteon demonstration as the first highway autopilot run on the Willow Run loop, a step up from traditional closed-course shakedowns toward trials that better mimic long-distance, higher-speed conditions. Developers and suppliers say that runs like these can punish systems in ways that low-speed or purely simulated tests simply do not.
Why this matters locally
The American Center for Mobility sits on roughly 500 acres at the historic Willow Run site and offers a mix of test environments, including a highway loop, tunnel, and urban arterial, that companies use for repeatable, production-oriented validation. ACM's website notes that the center also hosts interoperability testbeds, demo events, and engineering services that are seeing more use as the campus ramps up commercial work.
Sarkar's departure comes just as ACM moves from the heavy-lift infrastructure buildout into a phase defined by commercial verification and partner-led trials, a transition that local suppliers and economic development officials have been tracking closely. The change in leadership puts the center's board in charge of steering that next chapter while partner companies keep running their experiments at Willow Run.
