GM is taking full ownership of GM Cruise Holdings LLC now that the Cruise Board of Directors has approved GM’s merger offer. Previously, General Motors owned about 90 percent of Cruise, which will now be a wholly owned subsidiary of The General.
This acquisition is something of a formality by GM. The robotaxi business employing Cruise AV models for driverless ride-sharing is still dead, and there are no plans to bring it back. Instead, the business is being fully absorbed into General Motors, with its assets and some of its personnel being reassigned to work on the Super Cruise hands-free driving system, which General Motors now claims covers 750,000 miles of North American highways.
“By combining the specialized technology and talent at Cruise with our team developing Super Cruise, we’ll have the ability to accelerate our work on both assisted driving and autonomous driving,” said Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering. “We look forward to teaming with Cruise to accelerate our work together.”
General Motors made the call to drop Cruise robotaxi efforts in December 2024. “GM is committed to delivering the best driving experiences to our customers in a disciplined and capital-efficient manner,” said General Motors CEO Mary Barra at the time. “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.”
The decision was welcomed by industry analysts, who almost unanimously expressed that it was the right move for the automaker’s business. “The old GM would have been stubborn and kept throwing billions at it,” Freedom Capital Markets managing director of research Mike Ward told the Detroit Free Press in December. “GM can’t compete with Waymo. GM doesn’t need to be in the robotaxi business. This move shows capital discipline. What got GM into bankruptcy in 2008? Undisciplined capital allocation, plain and simple.”
Exiting the robotaxi business is expected to lower GM’s spending by as much as $1 billion annually. General Motors had invested more than $10 billion into Cruise throughout its lifetime.
Comments
GM should absolutely try like hell to become the first OEM to license FSD from Tesla.
Elon already said he would only sell if the OEM will utilize on high volumes.
GM can put it on the Silverado, Silverado EV, Sierra, Sierra EV, Tahoe, Suburban, Yukon, Escalade, Escalade IQ, and Cruise Robotaxis.
I do not see any other Legacy Automaker that can come close to those vehicle volumes.
Ford can come close with F-150, Expedition, and Navigator I guess but not really
“The old GM would have been stubborn and kept throwing billions at it,” Freedom Capital Markets managing director of research Mike Ward told…”
Lol, kinda like the $10B they already lost “throwing billions at it”? And btw the “new gm” is being led by old GM legacy employees.
They failed to mention in the story that they just axed 50% of the Cruise staff (1000 people) but everyone knew that was coming.
spot on
Or snowflakes could take individual responsibility for making their own life choices and DRIVING their own vehicles. Time to put on big boy pants, let go mommy’s hand and move out of the basement .
We currently own two late model Chevy EV’s. Neither my wife or I will use or pay for self driving. We will not pay the exorbitant price for all of the installed components required for self driving.
We love our current vehicles. Hopefully, GM will not attempt to saddle every new future vehicle with features that are unacceptable to some of us.
I get it, you have to keep up with competition and regulations, but I hate driver assist features, anything over the standard rear view mirrors and a backup cam, LOL.
I would consider purchasing this self-driving option only if it came with a 5 million dollar insurance umbrella policy. Paid by the manufacturer to cover, lawsuits, medical bills, and property damage, caused by the malfunction of this product.
GM invests over $10 billion into Cruise ?? How about investing $10 billion into something that will move my GM stock price up (been lackluster for over 12 years)
Imagine if GM had spent that $10 billion on actually improving their vehicles and designing more vehicles that people actually want to purchase.