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GM outlined a bullish autonomous vehicle plan at its October investor day and its branded “Under the Hood” event the following month. Kyle Vogt, who co-founded the autonomous vehicle company, and was the company’s first CEO, will take over the role on an interim basis. Wesley Bush, the former chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman and a GM board member, will join the Cruise board, GM said. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on October 16 opened an investigation into Cruise vehicles after receiving reports of two pedestrian injuries, including the October 2 incident. The Cruise cars "may not have exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway," the agency said.
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt resigns from GM-owned robotaxi unit
Cruise pulled all of its driverless cars off the road after its license to operate them was suspended in California. And it is awaiting a report from an outside law firm’s investigation into how it responded to a crash last month in which a Cruise car dragged a woman 20 feet. Initially, that means taking more of a direct hand in Cruise’s operation. Barra reportedly told employees that GM general counsel Craig Glidden will serve as Cruise’s co-president alongside Mo Elshenawy, who will also become chief technology officer. Former Tesla president Jon McNeill, who’s been a board member at GM for several years, was named vice chairman of the Cruise board alongside Barra. GM and Cruise did not provide additional details about why Ammann was leaving.
Meet The CEO Of My Kind Of Cruise, The Airbnb Of Cruises - Forbes
Meet The CEO Of My Kind Of Cruise, The Airbnb Of Cruises.
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GM’s big bet on driverless cars turns sour
Cruise is in the midst of securing final approval to commercialize a ride-hailing fleet of autonomous vehicles following years of testing in San Francisco. It's also growing the operation, with plans for the company to generate billions in revenue this decade. Eventually, an Uber self-driving car killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona, which resulted in the company shuttering the whole division. Rather than sit back and let driverless cars come to them eventually, Barra insisted on GM staying in the driver’s seat. And now it has to deal with the fallout when that company’s “move fast and break things” culture has resulted in a crisis. "The results of our ongoing reviews will inform additional next steps as we work to build a better Cruise centered around safety, transparency and trust," the company said in a statement.
After robotaxi dragged pedestrian 20 feet, Cruise founder and CEO resigns
Exclusive: GM's Cruise CEO offers apology, will allow share sales - Reuters
Exclusive: GM's Cruise CEO offers apology, will allow share sales.
Posted: Sun, 19 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Vogt and Kan, who more recently held the chief product officer role, founded the autonomous vehicle company in 2013. Initially, the pair had focused on kits that could retrofit a vehicle and turn it into a self-driving car. GM took interest and acquired the company in March 2016 in a deal of cash and stock valued at more than $1 billion. Kyle Vogt, a founder and chief executive of Cruise, the driverless car subsidiary of General Motors, resigned on Sunday, less than a month after Cruise suspended all autonomous operations after a series of traffic mishaps. In October, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the company’s operating permit, citing concerns about risks to public safety.
She graduated from Washington and Lee University, where she studied journalism and studio art. And while Ammann continued to push the company to expand, there were missed targets, notably the plan to launch a commercial robotaxi business in 2019. The company has spent the past two years inching toward that commercialization goal, along with the rest of the industry, which has gone through a spate of consolidation.
However, more layoffs are expected at the company that employs about 4,000 full-time employees. "I suspect at least one more high level exec will have to resign — anyone who made the call to obfuscate or omit information in communication with the California DMV," he said. "In my opinion, Cruise has been too slow in taking steps to rebuild trust with staff, regulators and the public. Executive departures are table stakes." GM executives, including CEO and Chair Mary Barra, had hoped the startup would be ramping up a driverless transportation network this year, and hoped Cruise would play a notable role in doubling the company's revenue by 2030. The company misled reporters about the facts, and maybe state regulators too. The Cruise vehicle then moved "rightward before braking aggressively, but still made contact with the pedestrian," the company said.
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Queenie Wong is a state politics reporter covering tech and entertainment policy for the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she wrote about social media companies for CNET and the Mercury News. She also covered politics and education for the Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore. Growing up in Southern California, she started reading The Times as a kid and took her first journalism class in middle school.
GM-owned Cruise "failed to disclose" full video and key crash details, DMV said.
Mo Elshenawy, who is currently executive vice president of engineering at Cruise, will serve as president and chief technology officer for Cruise. Craig Glidden will serve as president and continue as chief administrative officer. Jon McNeill, who is a member of GM’s board of directors and Cruise’s board, has been appointed vice chairman of Cruise’s board, the spokesperson said. In a separate internal email, also viewed by TechCrunch, GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra announced that Mo Elshenawy, who is executive vice president of engineering at Cruise, will serve as president and CTO for Cruise. Craig Glidden, a Cruise board member and GM’s EVP of legal and policy who was recently put in charge as chief administrative officer at Cruise, will continue in that role. Jon McNeill, a member of GM’s board, has been appointed vice chairman of the Cruise board.
GM announces Cruise CEO Dan Ammann is stepping down
The Cruise Board understands and respects his decision to resign as CEO, and we wish him well in his next chapter. We continue to believe strongly in Cruise’s mission and the potential of its transformative technology as we look to make transportation safer, cleaner and more accessible. The last 10 years have been amazing, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped Cruise along the way. The startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities, with each ride inspiring people with a small taste of the future. Ammann, a former investment banker, began leading Cruise in 2019 after serving as GM's president and chief financial officer before that.
The departure of the longtime GM executive is unexpected and came as a surprise to Cruise employees who asked not to be identified. The news was shared with Cruise employees Thursday as it was shared with the public, with one person noting it seemed unplanned and chaotic. Vogt ended up having to put her on speakerphone from his smartphone so she could communicate with Cruise staff. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) last month suspended Cruise's permits for autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing.
Ammann was reportedly let go from Cruise by GM CEO and Chair Mary Barra, who also chairs Cruise's board, over disagreements in strategy, including when to take the company public. Kyle Vogt, who co-founded Cruise and ran the start-up for years following GM's acquisition in 2016, has once again been named CEO of the company. He announced the appointment Monday via social media, and it was later confirmed by a Cruise spokesman.
McNeill, who joined the Cruise board recently and was previously chief operating officer at Lyft and president of Tesla, will now serve alongside Cruise Board Chair Mary Barra. Mo Elshenawy, Cruise's executive vice president of engineering, will become president and chief technology officer. It said Craig Glidden also will serve as president and continue as chief administrative officer for Cruise, an appointment announced earlier. A video, which TechCrunch viewed a day after the incident, showed the robotaxi braking aggressively and coming to a stop over the woman.
"We will continue to advance AV technology in service of our mission to make transportation safer, cleaner and more accessible." Vogt's decision to step down, announced late Sunday, follows a recent recall of all 950 Cruise vehicles to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October. The California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the license for Cruise.
And earlier this year, he outlined a plan to scale up Cruise’s fleet to 1 million vehicles by 2030. Ammann is the latest CEO of an AV company to step aside as the industry struggles to meet its own over-inflated expectations about the future of driverless cars. Earlier this year, John Krafcik announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Waymo after helping lead the company since 2015.
He argued that self-driving cars would lead to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities, using the example of a young girl killed in a San Francisco intersection to bolster his argument. Cruise even bought a full-page ad in The New York Times declaring “human drivers are terrible” and holding up its driverless cars as the only solution. And Vogt confidently took the stage at an investor conference and said Cruise’s steering wheel- and pedal-less Origin shuttles were “just days away” from federal approval — despite no such approval pending. And the resignations may not be over; Dan Kan, a co-founder of Cruise and the company’s chief product officer, is also stepping down, according to a source with knowledge of the events. The DMV action came three weeks after a Cruise vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. A woman entered a crosswalk at nighttime and was hit by two cars, the second of which was the Cruise vehicle.
Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide. Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt has resigned from his role at the autonomous vehicle venture owned by General Motors, according to a company statement sent to CNBC on Sunday. Last year, Ford and Volkswagen pulled their funding from Argo AI, forcing the company to cease operations.
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