Christopher Michelbacher, Director, is an electrification and battery expert with industry and government experience. He has held various leadership and technical roles in this space and is well-positioned to offer SMI’s clients unique insight on technical matters, proposal development for federal funding opportunities, and industry’s perspective.
Chris was most recently the Charging & Energy Lead for Audi of America in Herndon, VA. In this role, he handled future strategic initiatives as well as all technical and business aspects of the business’ charging and energy ecosystem. Prior to his time at Audi, Chris was first a research engineer at Idaho National Laboratory and a technical advisor for the Department of Energy in Washington, DC. While at DOE headquarters, he provided technical oversight and program management for the Vehicle Technologies Office’s Battery Grid & infrastructure portfolios. He was also the lead for the DOE Extreme Fast Charging Technical Gap Assessment, the DOE technical lead for multiple United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) Li-ion battery development projects, and served as a technical evaluator for several DOE funding opportunity announcement cycles in advanced lithium-ion battery cells, battery materials, and materials processing. His focus at Idaho National Laboratory was leading the organization’s battery testing center to capture life and performance metrics of current and future state-of-the-art electrochemical systems and on-road electrified vehicle evaluation programs.
Chris earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Montana State University and an MBA from George Washington University.