GM CEO Mary Barra sat down for an on-stage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 conference on Tuesday. She covered a variety of topics, from the politics of EVs to data security to GM’s “shifting” business in China. She also talked about autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, doubling down on GM selling a robotaxi with no pedals or steering wheel at some point.
“I’ve probably been working on [changing the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS)] for six, seven years now,” Barra said. “There came a point earlier this year where we said: ‘How much harder can we go when we don’t have the legislative change?’ And then, if you look at how hard it is to get a new law passed right now, we decided that we had to make the right decision.”
The decision she was referring to was the discontinuation of the development of the Cruise Origin fully autonomous electric van. That decision came in July 2024 while GM’s Cruise self-driving subsidiary was mired in controversy around an October 2023 incident in which a Chevy Bolt EV-based Cruise AV hit a pedestrian, causing GM to temporarily cease operations of Cruise. Cruise is operating again, but putting the Origin on ice was an expensive decision, costing GM $583 million. It was a big part of Cruise’s operating loss of $1.14 billion in Q2 2024.
Despite Cruise having a less-than-stellar year, Mary Barra is still bullish on AVs. She told TechCrunch she “absolutely” believes GM will one day sell personal autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel or pedals. “We’re going to see how it unfolds and how consumers leverage the technology,” she said.
However, she admits that making full autonomy marketable to consumers is taking longer than was expected in the previous decade. “I think we all thought in that 2016, 2017 time frame it was going to go much more quickly,” she said.
In other autonomy news, Elon Musk showed the world prototypes of the Tesla Cybercab and Tesla Robovan at the “We, Robot” conference in October. They’re both fully autonomous concepts without pedals or steering wheels, and Musk optimistically predicted the Cybercab two-seater will begin production in 2026.
Watch the full interview with Mary Barra below. The discussion about Cruise and autonomy starts at the 7:49 mark.
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Comments
More WEF BS.
What I don’t get is this. Even EV’s that have a lot less maintenance that ICE and even a fully autonomous vehicle will still need tires. They will need alignments. They will still have parts that wear and need replacement.
In those cases and where they have no steering wheel or pedals, how would they be serviced? How would they be taken out of the factory? Loaded onto a truck?
So please. As a country and world, we are too far off for this stupid stuff.
With EVs, tires and brakes are needed a lot more frequently due to the weight.
The same way autonomous trains (like the JFK AirTrain) are serviced. Remotely taken off service and manually driven to the service facility.
“you will own nothing and be happy.” Direct quote from our WEF overlords.
The point is AVs will not be owned by consumers. They will be owned by large corporations and government fleets, will go where they want you to go, deny you service when they decide you’ve traveled too much, and you’ll have to wait in line for their use, and justify why you need to go to the store twice in one week.
The US auto boom was due to the ultimate American/western ideal-freedom of movement. You can go wherever whenever. Not subject to a train/bus schedule. With a steering wheel, you can force a car to go where you will (safety requirement that a physical connection to the wheels exists when the power steering fails) an AV can drive you right to the commissars station when you post the wrong thing on X, or worse, conveniently off a cliff if you run for president in the wrong party.
Please, stop spending money on the bullcr@p. Just focus on your customer. We want affordable reliable cars. End of story.
A car with no steering wheel is very fitting for a company led by a CEO with no brain.
This insulting comments is unwarranted
She is running that company into the ground,, nothing but junk vehicles since she has taken over. As a 50 year GM monitor I doubt I will ever buy another one. They are the most unreliable vehicles out there thanks to her leadership.
Whatever it looks like, please don’t make the front seats look like two passenger seats. It can look like anything. It can and should look better.
You will own nothing and be happy. You will drive nothing and comply.
…at least in their twisted world.
This is what they meant when a certain large country in Asia is seen as the “model to follow” by the WEF. “State owned” and a surveillance state watching over your every move is their dream world.
What has Barra been right about? Seems to me that everything she’s championed and led GM into hasn’t been successful. GM’s still making lots of money off of old fashioned ICE trucks, SUVs and vans sold in the USA and then losing it on AVs, EVs and China all of which, according to Barra, was the future.
I also am going to double down on my dream of one day owning a unicorn. Maybe a Pegasus too while I’m at it.
GM forces products on dealers, they don’t want and then penalizes them for not selling them. Plus, they have no sold order process for customers buying vehicles they want to buy. I’ve never seen anything like it. She must have a portrait of Chairman Mao hanging in her house.
STUPID
Nonsense!
Your in a Johnny cab! Hell of a day isn’t it!?
Bunch of horschetta.
Just short sighted
No steering wheel means you just potentially lost another freedom. I will steer my own car where I want it to go not GM or Google or insert tech company here big name!
Looking at that one picture you can almost see the pinwheels twirling around in her eyes.