G.M. Will Stop Developing Self-Driving Taxis
The New York Times
The company said it would now focus its efforts on developing fully autonomous vehicles for personal use.
General Motors said on Tuesday that it would stop developing a taxi that can drive itself, ending a yearslong project that the company spent billions of dollars on and leaving the field to competitors like Tesla, Amazon and Waymo.
The automaker said it would fold its Cruise subsidiary, which was working on that project, into its main operations, allowing formerly separate development teams to jointly develop fully autonomous vehicles for private owners.
The decision removes G.M. from a business that some in the industry believe could someday be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, if researchers can solve formidable technological hurdles. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, and other Silicon Valley executives have sketched a future where thousands of driverless cars ferry passengers to destinations.
But Mary T. Barra, the chief executive of G.M., suggested that the payoff was too far in the future to justify the expense of developing the technology, which has already cost the company $10 billion.
“You have to understand the cost of running a robotaxi fleet, which is not our core business and is very expensive,” she said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday.
Instead, she said, G.M. will focus on technology that will allow vehicles sold to consumers to steer, accelerate and brake without driver intervention under certain conditions. The goal is to eventually develop cars that can drive themselves without human supervision.
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