Dan Ammann, former General Motors president and the current CEO of the automaker’s autonomous driving subsidiary, Cruise, believes the world needs to “move beyond the car,” as we know it today.
In a recent blog post published through Medium, Ammann said we need to introduce technology that will help us move past using “the human-driven, gasoline-powered, single-occupant car as our primary mode of transportation.”

Dan Ammann (far right) with Cruise executives Kyle Vogt (center) and Dan Kan (far left)
While Ammann acknowledges that public transportation and micro-mobility solutions such as Lime scooters can help alleviate congestion in cities and get some people out of their cars, he says autonomous cars will also play a major role in changing the way we get around. Cruise is intently focused on removing human drivers from cars, reducing emissions by being all-electric and reducing congestion via affordable ride sharing, Ammann says, so he thinks GM also contribute massively to the future of the mobility industry.
“To make order-of-magnitude — rather than incremental — improvements in transportation, we need to build alternatives that are superior to the status quo in every way,” he wrote in the blog post.

Cruise AV Concept interior
Cruise essentially wants to replace ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, which have small earnings per ride due to the high cost of paying their drivers. If Cruise or another competing company such as Waymo could ever produce a fully self driving vehicle, they’d be well poised to overtake both Uber and Lyft. Ammann envisions Cruise operating more like a private, mass transportation service, though, saying that ride-hailing apps “have disrupted the taxi industry with subsidized rides at the push of a button,” but they haven’t solved the problems, as Uber and Lyft vehicles are also clogging roadways.
“Despite making up less than 1% of all vehicle miles traveled, ride-sharing has added further congestion, more emissions, and potentially even decreased safety in our cities from over-tired and overworked drivers,” Ammann also wrote.
Developing working, self-driving technology is only one of the major hurdles Cruise has to overcome to help Ammann achieve this vision, though. The company also needs to get regulators on its side and convince them that driverless vehicles should be let lose on streets with other motorists without a safety driver. Convincing the public to take a driverless ride-share vehicle may prove to be a challenge, as well – though we imagine cheaper rides would be enough to convert most people into believers rather quickly.
You can read Dan Ammann’s Medium post in its entirety at this link.
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Comments
How ignorant…you can’t make this crap up. Did anyone tell this wizard that you can’t force people to buy or use something they don’t want?
In the coming world that they want, people won’t have the right to make choices.
Please dan go climb in a hole and just stay there.
I can see this in big cities like New York and Chicago but you would have to have full driverless cars in the city to do it. Nobody is going to give up the freedom to get in a car , ride a motorcycle to be stuck in a car with other people you don’t know.
This is the inevitable future weather we like it or not. But.!!!…. I will wait a long time before me and my family ride in one.
Hopefully I am long gone before this takes place.
What I would want the Cruise CEO to say is that he is willing to be held criminally responsible for the death or injury caused by one of his automated vehicles because anyone who sees these vehicles on the street shouldn’t be extremely comfortable because they’re sometimes in a state of confusion and needing the human driver to take over.
Ha good luck with that Dan the Liberal leftist. Your not getting that kind of control over me ever!
It seems like he spews the GM corporate lines very effectively.
Wait a minute… most of us seriously enjoy the personal freedoms associated with ownership and driving. How do you completely discount that? No one I know is clamoring for autonomous vehicles and a ridesharing world.
gm’s stock price is still in the toilet. nobody believes this vision will come to fruition any time soon.
1. Is there such a thing as a home dishwasher that you fill, push clean, and the dishes are spotless 12 minutes later?
2. Is there such a thing as a supermarket cart that puts itself away?
3. Is there such a thing as a plane that can avoid turbulence?
4. Is there such a thing as an actual Smart TV? (Which would require no remotes at all?)
These things are impossible. But cars that drive themselves and harm no one? ANY MINUTE NOW.
How stupid have people become…
If GM were smart, they would sell Cruise now before people realize what a fantasy it is.
Look at how many glitches there are in Bluetooth and standard infotainment systems in cars. Are we to really believe that these drones will operate 100 percent effectively 100 percent of the time?
Yep. My smart dvd player, when I select YouTube, I get BBC several times before it figures it out.
Dan Ammann intends to have most of us do most of our driving ASAP in GM autonomous taxis. I do so want this. Use the above link to Ammann to read his latest news about the matter.