The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
GM wants to drive future of cars that drive themselves
Automaker investing $600M in advanced technologies this year.
DETROIT — The chief executive of General Motors, an automaker synonymous with Detroit, saw the future of driving not in the Motor City but on the streets of San Francisco.
Mary T. Barra, a GM lifer who had worked her way from engineer to the top, was in the back seat of a prototype self-driving electric car as it wound its way through the city’s downtown a year ago.
She wanted to see for herself whether automation was ready to take over from a driver — safely, and on a mass scale. How would it react, for example, when it reached an intersection as a light turned yellow?
Driving in a situation like that, “you have to make a decision,” she recalled in a recent interview. “Generally if you decide to go, you decide to speed up. Or you stop.” If the technology works, she said, it will make the right decision: “The car knows.”
After that drive, Barra made her own decision to speed up, convinced that such cars were worth betting the company on.
Within six months after what she called her “aha! moment” in San Francisco, a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Bolts, the company’s new electric car, was being built at a GM assembly plant in Michigan.
It was a first for any major car company, and the first leg of a race she is determined to win. The question now is whether a company identified with the industry’s bygone glory days can be a trendsetter in 21st-century transportation — and beat out Silicon Valley rivals like Google, Tesla and Uber with no legacy business to encumber them.
General Motors is making a big wager that it can succeed, shedding overseas operations while investing $600 million this year in self-driving cars and other advanced technologies. It spent $1 billion on Cruise Automation, a Silicon Valley startup that developed the driverless technology powering Barra’s ride in San Francisco.
In beginning to assemble fully automated Bolts in January, GM was a step ahead of Google and Uber, which are converting mass-market minivans and sedans into driverless models.
Its commitment is on display at a sprawling plant in Orion Twp, Mich., where the company builds conventional subcompact cars as well as Bolts.
One area of the factory is dedicated to a small-scale assembly line where workers customize Bolts with self-driving equipment.