General Motors has announced plans to restructure its autonomous driving strategy and prioritize the development of ADAS on a path to fully autonomous personal vehicles. The American company will build on the progress of Super Cruise, the company’s hands-off, eyes-on driving feature which is available in over 20 vehicle models.
GM intends to combine the majority-owned Cruise and GM technical teams into a single entity to advance autonomous and assisted driving, but will no longer fund Cruise’s robotaxi development work, given the considerable time and resources needed to scale the business, with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.
General Motors owns about 90% of Cruise, but it has agreements with other shareholders that will raise its ownership to more than 97%. The company will pursue the acquisition of the remaining shares. Following this, GM will work with the Cruise leadership team to restructure and refocus its operations. As a result of this, GM expects to lower spending by more than US$1bn annually after the proposed plan is completed, expected in the first half of 2025.
Mary Barra, chair and CEO of GM, said “Cruise has been an early innovator in autonomy, and the deeper integration of our teams, paired with GM’s strong brands, scale and manufacturing strength, will help advance our vision for the future of transportation.”
“As the largest US automotive manufacturer, we’re fully committed to autonomous driving and excited to bring GM customers its benefits – things like enhanced safety, improved traffic flow, increased accessibility, and reduced driver stress,” said Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering, General Motors.