General Motors, like most other major players in the automotive sector, is working to make autonomous vehicles a reality. The automaker and its subsidiary, Cruise Automation, operate a fleet of nearly 200 self-driving Chevrolet Bolt prototypes in California, Arizona, and Metro Detroit.
Recently, GM published a video interview with Costi, one of the company’s Autonomous Performance Engineers, who talks about his daily experiences helping the automaker ready its autonomous vehicle technology for production. General Motors is “integrating technologies that have never been in a vehicle before,” Costi says, and “doing things that have never been done.”
Costi works at General Motors’ proving grounds, spending plenty of time riding along in autonomous prototypes to ensure that the automaker’s software passes all the requisite performance and safety metrics before being implemented by GM’s Cruise Automation team in San Francisco. He spends a fair amount of time out there, too, observing the autonomous vehicles’ performance on the bay area’s hilly streets.
“I get a little bit of everything,” Costi says. “I get to sit in the vehicle; I get to go ride in the vehicle out in San Francisco; and constant interaction with upper management here at General Motors, and also our leadership out [at] Cruise Automation.”
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I wonder if he was in the Chevy Bolt EV that slowed down for a raccoon crossing the street.