Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | Alice
Edited by | Xiaohan
According to foreign media The verge, yesterday, General Motors announced that Dan Ammann, CEO of its self-driving company Cruise, is about to leave, and Cruise co-founder and chief technology officer Kyle Vogt will serve as interim CEO.
From left: Cruise co-founder Daniel Kan, Kyle Vogt, and CEO Dan Ammann
GM did not disclose the reason for Ammann's departure, saying only that Ammann was "looking for other opportunities," and a cruise spokesman declined to comment.
In April this year, Google Waymo, the largest self-driving company in the United States, announced the departure of its CEO, which attracted close attention from the autonomous driving circle.
Some analysts in the industry believe that the core reason for the departure of its CEO is that the investment in research and development is too large, but the company has been unable to make a breakthrough in commercialization.
Cruise, as the second largest self-driving company in the United States, actually followed Waymo's "footsteps" a few months later, which is quite surprising. At present, the official has not given the reason for leaving, but from the perspective of the development trend of automatic driving technology, the probability of commercial landing difficulties is also a key factor.
First, he was once the backbone of the heart and led Cruise to develop rapidly
Ammann was the backbone of Cruise and made a lot of efforts for the development of the company.
In 2016, GM acquired Cruise to accelerate its self-driving car development projects. Ammann, then president of General Motors, was responsible for the acquisition, and later became CEO of Cruise.
In 2020, he led the launch of Cruise's first self-driving model, Origin. At the same time, under his leadership, Cruise hit the iron while it was hot and acquired Voyage, a self-driving startup, and the company expanded again.
▲Origin self-driving car
Under his leadership, Cruise has received a number of institutional investments, and in October 2018, Honda announced plans to invest $2.75 billion (about 17.51 billion yuan) in Cruise over 12 years. In addition, Cruise raised funds from Japan's SoftBank Vision Fund and T.Rowe Price, which is valued at $19 billion (about 121 billion yuan).
Earlier this year, Cruise said it was aiming to expand its self-driving car to 1 million by 2030.
As early as 2017, GM announced plans to test self-driving cars in New York in early 2018, but in May 2018, Cruise issued a statement saying that it had not obtained government testing permission, and the test plan was abandoned.
Coincidentally, in 2019, Cruise issued another statement, deciding to postpone plans to launch the Robotaxi service in San Francisco that year, and did not announce a new launch date. Foreign media speculated that this service may be launched in 2022.
However, after many twists and turns, GM is still full of confidence in the development of Cruise.
On December 16, a message on GM's official website showed that GM is firmly committed to achieving the vision of zero collision, zero emissions and zero congestion of autonomous vehicles, and that autonomous driving technology will play a key role in it.
GM said cruise, led by GM, has now taken the lead in self-driving ride-sharing services and created tremendous value for GM shareholders and Cruise's minority shareholders. In the future, GM will work with Cruise to seek greater development in areas other than autonomous driving shared mobility and delivery.
Second, autonomous driving faces many challenges More than one CEO has left
At present, the autonomous driving industry is developing rapidly, but it is also facing challenges such as huge investment, large-scale delivery difficulties, independent research and development failure, and strict regulatory approvals.
Ammann is the latest CEO to leave a self-driving company after Waymo, a google-owned self-driving company, also announced its departure.
In April, John Krafcik announced his retirement as CEO of Waymo, which he has been with since 2015 to help transform Waymo, which is responsible for Waymo's transformation from a self-driving project within Google, Project Chauffeur, to an independent company.
During his tenure, Waymo forged partnerships with several automakers, launched a regional ride-hailing pilot in Arizona equipped with fully driverless cars, and expanded the business to trucking and last-mile delivery.
Waymo driverless car
Conclusion: Autonomous driving is both an opportunity and a challenge
With the rapid development of smart cars, more and more players have entered the game of autonomous driving, and competition in the autonomous driving industry has intensified.
Unmanned driving technology requires a large number of sensors and computing software, its unit cost is huge, the cost of each vehicle may be as high as 300,000 to 400,000 US dollars (about 1.91 million yuan to 2.55 million yuan), high research and development costs, cost recovery is a huge challenge for current autonomous driving companies. In addition, regulation and how to ensure absolute safety are also important factors that autonomous driving companies need to consider.
Autonomous driving is related to life safety, can not be achieved overnight, its development is still a long way. However, with the continuous breakthrough of autonomous driving technology and the continuous improvement of supervision, consumers will gradually get safer and more convenient travel options.