GM to refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles

General Motors (GM) announced that it plans to realign its autonomous driving strategy and prioritize development of advanced driver assistance systems on a path to fully autonomous personal vehicles. “GM will build on the progress of Super Cruise, the company’s hands-off, eyes-on driving feature, now offered on more than 20 GM vehicle models and currently logging over 10 million miles per month. GM intends to combine the majority-owned Cruise LLC and GM technical teams into a single effort to advance autonomous and assisted driving. Consistent with GM’s capital allocation priorities, GM will no longer fund Cruise’s robotaxi development work given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market,” the company stated. “GM, which owns about 90% of Cruise, has agreements with other shareholders that will raise its ownership to more than 97%. The company will pursue the acquisition of the remaining shares. Contingent upon the repurchase of these shares and Cruise board approval, GM will work with the Cruise leadership team to restructure and refocus Cruise’s operations. GM expects the restructuring to lower spending by more than $1 billion annually after the proposed plan is completed, expected in the first half of 2025. GM will host a conference call for analysts at 4:30 p.m. ET featuring GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra, Executive Vice President and CFO Paul Jacobson, and David Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering,” the company added.