Autonomous vehicle sensor technology company Neural Propulsion Systems (NPS) has announced that former chairman and CEO at GM, Rick Wagoner, has joined the NPS team as investor and board observer, providing strategic guidance as NPS develops next-generation advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving technology. Among the company’s offerings is the NPS AtomicSense platform. Wagoner served as GM chairman and CEO between 2000 and 2009.
“I am very impressed with the NPS founding team and technology,” Wagoner said. “NPS has developed an extremely innovative approach based on new mathematics to redefine and dramatically improve radar, which is a critical technology for future improvements in the auto and defense industry, among others.”
Wagoner joins fellow board observers Marwan Fawaz, former CEO of Nest, and Kevin Reid, a founding partner of the Blue Lagoon Companies. Wagoner will also work with the board of directors, which includes Behrooz Rezvani, Bobby Yazdani, Elizabeth Cross, and John Marren.
Wagoner began his 32-year career at GM began as an analyst in the treasurer’s office, a position he took after graduating from Harvard. In 1981, Wagoner became treasurer of GM’s Brazil subsidiary before serving as managing director. Wagoner was named GM CFO in 1992, and later executive vice president and/or president of North American Operations in 1994. In 1998, he was named president and COO, eventually serving as GM chairman and CEO between 2000 and 2009.
After GM, Wagoner was appointed director at EV charging station company ChargePoint Inc. in 2017. In 2018, Wagoner invested into YourMechanic, a startup that connects users with certified mechanics.
Meanwhile, NPS was founded in 2018 and develops digital imaging radar technology that leverages patented radar algorithms running on graphical processor units. The company’s NPS AtomicSense technology uses these technologies to enable vehicle operators to accurately sense complex road environments, as well as provides a pathway for the development of new advanced driver assist systems and autonomous driving systems.
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Comments
No mention that Rick drove GM into bankruptcy? While he ran GM, it produced some of the worst vehicles in its history. Rick was obviously not a car guy and it showed.
Dissagree. He was way better than Mary. He really spearheaded GM cornering the Brazil market. He also oversaw an actual grow in market share and product perception right up to the financial collapse, which BYW, also tanked most other automakers worldwide and ford only survived by the skin of their teeth.
IDK if “smarter” Mary will be able to survive the impending collapse. It takes a real leader to survive hard time, which Mary is not. At least Rick has soul.
Mary Barra will go down in history as one of the 50 worst CEOs in the history of the auto industry. However, Rick Wagoner is not much better.
The Government and Banks created the reason for the recession. It happened in 1999 when the big brokerage lobbied Congress to gut the Glass Steagall Act that had been in place since 1933. Glass Steagall Act kept the Bankers out of speculative investments like energy. Crude was under $13 a barrel when the banker drove up prices with peak oil story with the business networks and news wires cheerleaders in Made or Jume of 2008 Goldman Sachs raised their crude price to $200 a barrel. They got it up to $147 plus just 2 weeks ago today JP Morgan raised their for crude this to $380 a barrel. Many companies were victims of banker Greed
A well informed post John.
Thank you.
So did you like Rick’s Pontiac Aztek or maybe you bought a Buick Terraza? Rick never understood minivans or SUVs, e.g., Hummer, so Ford and Chrysler/Jeep ate GM’s lunch.
No, but we had the Pontiac solistic, the cobalt SS, the GTO/SS. He pushed to get Pontiac and Oldsmobiles to have unique product lines as opposed to just being rebadged Chevys. Yes the aztec failed but the GMC enyov XUV was popular as was the hummers up until gas reached 4$/gallon.
His #1 flaw was he gave in too quickly with the union renegotiating in 2004. He knew high gas prices were coming and was mandating GM shift to smaller more economic models, that is until the UAW striked over how that would cut the more labor intensive SUV lines.
Rick’s pet project was the SSR. Only creditable move he made was to hire Bob Lutz to run product development, and it was Bob who pushed for and oversaw the Solstice, GTO, and corrected many design staff flaws. Otherwise Rick was a dud.
Look up who’s pet project the Aztec was:
Lynn Meyers, general marketing manager for Pontiac-GMC during its creation…
Besides, CEO doesn’t do any designing. They set the corporate mood. Ricks mood was inovation, and customer focused. Mary’s is screw the customer, screw product quality, get as much money right now and let the brand’s customers and future be dammed. The culture she’s brought actually led to the chief Silverado engineer bragging about how the T1 platform truck was significantly cheaper to build, but they were going to charge the customers more regardless.
Yep.
I remember seeing the Aztek engineering buck in the Engineering North Building at the Tech Ctr (where they did vehicle packaging). After looking it over for about five minutes I told my counterpart from Pontiac Planning that they’d be lucky to sell 2000/mo of those dogs. He was horrified and said the planning volume (the volume they used to build the business case for the product) was 60,000/yr.
In it’s best year they sold….2000/mo. Needless to say it was a big loser financially.
I always thought Wagoner was a good guy, he just didn’t see what was coming. GM could have easily done what Ford did (raise capital) if GM’s management had anticipated the banking crisis like Mulally did at Ford. As for Mary Barra, she does see what is coming. Better than most auto executives. So many GM fans dislike her because they don’t like her emphasis on EV’s, but that is where the future is. Wait until you see the coming EPA vehicle emissions regulations.
GM has never posted a loss in any quarter since Mary Barra became CEO nearly a decade ago. First quarter profits for 2023 will be a record. Meanwhile, Chrysler is history and Ford is on the ropes. Mary’s got it going on.
Mary’s GM hasn’t matched Ricks profits once when inflation adjusted. It’s easy today to post record profits when the dollar is 30% weaker then it was 2 years ago. GM’s inflation adjusted profits have dropped steadily for the last 8 years.
Pathetic excuse for a loser Rick.
At least he posted an actual increase in market share from 2000-2006. All other GM execs in the last 50 years lost market share. He’s the only one who bucked that trend even if for a short period.
Thanks to the great Mary Barra, Buick will be China only in 2030.
Buick is irrelevant. It has only one vehicle made in USA, the Enclave which is just a re-badged Chevy Traverse.
Where I live, there is a saying, the winters are too long, and the summers are too short. Not exactly ideal weather for EVs, besides, the infrastructure for EVs does not exist where I live.
Rick was a good guy actually but he was handed a company that was entirely different from what current management was given thanks to the restructuring. It’s not really comparable.
Apart from the macro economic differences, GM, pre-bankruptcy was burdened with MASSIVE legacy costs from when the company was vertically integrated to the tune of nearly $8B year. They had operations in virtually every corner of the world, some profitable, many not. This was a company that employed over 600,000 people at one time and they were paying pensions to even more than that.
Because of those legacy burdens it affected everything else from investment in new product development to new plants and facilities. Basically the company was being bled dry. While management was making progress on lowering fixed costs (spinning off their parts operations-Delphi, exiting non core businesses, etc, etc.) it wasn’t fast enough before the macro economic credit crunch caused a lack of liquidity in the capital markets.
Heavy manufacturing companies in particular rely on capital liquidity to pay short term bills as many of them don’t have huge cash reserves just sitting around (relative to their massive costs). On a day-to-day basis lots heavy manufacturers survive on near term cash flow and borrowing as a back up. Cut off near or long term borrowing and things get dicey real fast as we witnessed. Especially for a company like GM with their cost burden.
Rick and his team were in a tough spot but had they gone to the capital markets prior to the crunch they may well have survived and that’s on them. We’ll never know however.
Barra has taken GM from the world’s largest carmaker to the 4 largest in just 8 years.
MB did GM one of the most profitable and sustainable world carmakers. Wagoneer turned the world’s largest automaker to very weak and eventually went bankrupt. He is loser.
It’s so easy to see those who do not know anything about the car business. Just read the negative comments about Rick Wagoner, above. The people that wrote those are nothing but STUPID. They just want to trash a man they obviously know nothing about. They need to try reading something written credible sources, not the garbage they listen to.
Oh really? Why don’t you explain why nobody in the auto industry has hired Rick for anything all these years after he was fired? Is everyone in the auto industry stupid too?
No one is going to hire a guy over 65 that worked for one of the worlds 10 largest company with a salary of $20 million plus. Mr wagnor is on several boards where he is effectively paid millions to “guide” the direction of companies rather than actually run them on a daily basis.
No he’s not a looser, he is an extremely accomplished man who is probably on the phone right now advising some company presidents as he sits by his pool drinking cocktails.
Just you
Best comment so far
When one looks back to the 1997 to 2002 era when Rick Wagoner,Sergio Marchionne and Alan Mullaly were the heads of their respective companies it’s apparent that Mulally was the best CEO. Ford was on the ropes and he revived it from its near death experience.
Mulally had an engineer background where as the other two had accounting/ finance backgrounds. But more importantly Mullaly was a leader of people. He didn’t bring in a whole bunch of people from his previous employer. He initially made few personnel changes but got everyone working together and eliminated personal fiefdoms in the Company. His first personnel change was getting rid of one the Ford family hanger ons. That reverberated through the Company big time
Who was the “Ford family hanger on”?
Rick cancelled the EV1 program and scrapped the cars, guaranteeing the birth and success of Tesla. Oldsmobile celebrated when Lynn Meyers left for Pontiac. My neighbor is a retired Olds executive.
Mary Barras place in gm history is still up in the air. Save your vote until 2030.
The EV1 program was never intended to continue. It was experimental for other things to come. GM only leased those vehicles out none were sold for that exact reason. Experimental!
In an interview with CBS years ago, Rick said his biggest regret was canceling the EV1 program. He said it was expensive but we should have kept going.
Rick Wagoner was a really good guy. He had GM moving in the right direction, but the company was so big that it was going to take time. Kind of like steering the Titanic. GM went to the government for a loan, but the government wanted bigger change and faster. I watched quite a few interviews that he gave and to me, he came across as an honest guy.
I actually liked Rick Wagoner. He was genuinely trying to get GM moving with some nice high performance cars. Too bad the financial crisis of 2008 hit him hard, got blamed for everything. I wish him well.
If only GM would invest in the development of vehicles that consumers actually want to drive themselves.