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A leading contender for GM’s chief executive role says the company’s future lies in autonomous vehicles that will help it outpace global rivals, including Chinese ones.
In an interview with the FT, Sterling Anderson, a former Tesla executive charged with overseeing GM’s next generation of electric and autonomous vehicles, outlined his vision for autonomous vehicles that could transport people to work, but also collect their groceries for them when they are at the office. He said he believes people would still prefer to own their own car rather than relying on a robot taxi service.
“There’s a certain degree of autonomy inherent in owning a car,” said Anderson, who oversaw the development of Tesla’s early autonomous systems and founded self-driving startup Aurora Innovation before being poached by GM Chief Executive Mary Barra last year. “You’re not subject to the whims of a network. You’re not waiting for someone or something else to send you something. It’s your car.”
Companies such as Waymo, Tesla, and Amazon-owned Zoox operate fully autonomous robotaxi services in a limited number of cities in the United States. But for personal use, most traditional manufacturers, including GM, only offer so-called Level 2 Plus capabilities, technology that still requires active monitoring by a human driver behind the wheel.
The technological barriers and development costs are significantly higher to develop a “Level 4” system for personal use, which allows autonomous vehicles to drive themselves without a human behind the wheel.
Some manufacturers, including GM’s Detroit rival Ford, are focusing on introducing “level 3” autonomy, in which a vehicle drives itself but a human driver must be ready to take over.
But Anderson said Level 3 was a bad solution because it relied on “unreasonable expectations” that a distracted human could take control at any time. Instead, GM plans to fully introduce Level 4 autonomous driving on highways for its Cadillac Escalade IQ model by 2028 before expanding it to other truck and SUV models, and gradually to other types of roads.
While it’s a different approach from robot taxi companies testing and operating in specific cities, “technologically we’re all aiming for the same goal, which is autonomous driving anywhere and anytime,” he said. When asked if GM would get into the robotaxis business once it reaches that point, he said, “I’m not making any announcements, but nothing would stop us.” »
Anderson appeared at a GM event in New York on Wednesday to announce a push to cut GM’s development cycle in half from its current level of four to five years, using AI and machine learning to reduce the time and effort spent on testing, research and development. Its new technical approach will be used to build a platform dedicated to electric vehicles using manganese-rich lithium batteries.
“For decades, designers passed sketches to engineers, who then passed the plans to manufacturers,” Anderson said. “We’re replacing that relay race, that whole sequential process, with a new operating system built on large-scale data.”
He pointed out that as the largest U.S. automaker, GM’s “treasure trove” of manufacturing data gave it an edge over tech startups — and that was a “big part” of his decision to work for a Detroit automaker.
“I could create a robotics company, or I could exploit the data, the know-how, the means and the resources of a company which is already profitable and which exploits this data every day.”
American automakers are currently protected from direct Chinese competition by high tariffs and national security restrictions. Detroiters are also benefiting from the Trump administration’s removal of emissions restrictions, allowing a boom in sales of large trucks and SUVs. But critics warn the short-term reprieve risks seeing the U.S. auto industry fall further behind its European and Asian rivals.
Anderson responded: “What do you suggest, do we take our ball and go home, or do we invest in leapfrog opportunities?” The answer, he said, was “let’s go invest in the next wave. Let’s build the next generation EV platform that no one else can do right now, not even the Chinese.”
Additional reporting by Rafe Rosner-Uddin in San Francisco
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