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Transportation

GM Expects To Offer Personal Self-Driving Vehicles To Consumers This Decade (cnbc.com) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra expects the automaker to offer self-driving vehicles to consumers later this decade. CNBC reports: "Later in the decade, I believe, and there's a lot to still unfold, but I believe we'll have personal autonomous vehicles," she told investors Wednesday during the company's first-quarter earnings call. She did not specifically say GM would sell such vehicles directly to consumers. It could lease them or offer customers a subscription service like it did previously for Cadillac vehicles.

Barra's comments come after GM showcased a personal autonomous vehicle concept car for its Cadillac brand in January. The vehicle was based on the Origin, an autonomous shuttle from its majority-owned subsidiary Cruise. GM has a two-pronged approach regarding such systems. Cruise is leading development of fully autonomous vehicles, while the automaker expands its advanced driver-assist Super Cruise system to 22 vehicles by 2023. Barra said the goal for Super Cruise is to eventually offer hands-free driving in 95% of driving conditions. "Both paths are very important because the technology we put on vehicles today, I think makes them safer and delights the customers, and is going to give us an opportunity for subscription revenue," she said Wednesday. "And then the ultimate work that we're doing at Cruise that is full autonomous really opens up more possibilities than I think we can online today."
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GM Expects To Offer Personal Self-Driving Vehicles To Consumers This Decade More

GM Expects To Offer Personal Self-Driving Vehicles To Consumers This Decade

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  • This means they haven't even started and have absolutely no idea how to get it done. However, if an announcement like this can keep you from buying a Tesla or selling all your GM shares, that's a win. Executives need to buy a yacht today, not ten years from now.

  • So I guess they only have to maintain another 10 years of multi-billion dollar annual losses? After all, those companies have no path to profitability with human drivers even if they are paid sub-starvation wages forever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      ????

      Uber/Lyft pay about $12.50/hour to their drivers when it's all said and done (they'll still need to maintain their magic cars, and their magic cars will still sit idles and need to deadhead). We'll call it $20 for funsies.

      My trip to work is a $17 wait and save Lyft ride and 15 minutes away. Hypothetically, if we assume half idle time that's $10 in driver time for my commute taking it down to $7.00

      $14/day * 20 for my commute comes to $280.00 for the labor free fee for my commute. I also make drives on th

  • will the laws be in place by end? and lawsuits from driver-assist (auto pilot) issues be done working there way though the courts?

  • Good Luck (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @08:00PM (#61353226)

    GM will manage itself into the ground and need another bailout before it sells autonomous cars to consumers. Just look at the 'chip shortage', they cancelled orders and then cried when they needed those orders - and then daddy government asks Taiwan for help. GM looks pretty lame.

    • "Ford, GM, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota, and VW" are all facing chip shortages [caranddriver.com].

      Before you get all excited about it happening to GM and how that supposedly makes them worse than everyone else, recognize that literally all the largest automakers are having the same problem. Yes, literally literally.

      • I didn't compare GM to anyone else, didn't even mention anyone else. I talked only about GM's ability to manage itself. Is there some recent history that shows that GM can manage itself without failing?

        • I think they can probably kind of hack it at this point, so long as the government hydrogen vehicle contracts come through. Otherwise that's a big ouch.

  • They just need to get the AI stoned then it will drive ultra carefully at a safe speed.
  • that don't break while on the cars.

    How the hell will they design a car that drives itself?

    More importantly, if GM can't design wheels that break, do you really want to trust your life to their software designers?
  • I think I can feel the goalposts moving already!

  • Subscription Revenue!? (Score:3)

    by ThosLives ( 686517 ) on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @09:16PM (#61353422) Journal

    Why would anyone ever subscribe to transportation? How does that delight anyone?

    I still have yet to see a model where self driving cars will cost the average car owner less out of pocket than current cars. If a car costs $20k more than a non-self driving car, even if my car insurance went to $0 I wouldn't be able to make up that extra cost. And no, I wouldn't be able to make more money in the time I'm not driving; my job doesn't pay by the hour, and any increase in productivity I might have while in transit isn't going to translate into more money in my pocket.

    I see self driving cars making transportation accessible to people who currently cannot drive, which is good, but it is going to be at the sacrifice of people who currently enjoy the freedom of personal driving today.

    That's not even getting into issues like rent-seeking and the hazards of over-computerized everything.

    • Owning a dishwasher doesn't save anybody any money either, yet they are ubiquitous.

      • Sure, there is a value proposition for self-driving vehicles. The question is one of cost-benefit. I'm not convinced for my driving patterns that it would ever be worth the monetary cost; I fear though that I won't have a choice. But I'm getting old and crotchety...

        The dishwasher example is interesting: The price point of a dishwasher is much much lower. The number of things you can do while the dishwasher is running is substantially larger than the things you can do while in transit. A dishwasher is a fi

        • ATM, there is a shortage of truck drivers in the US. Self driving trucks will help with many delivery routes.
        • I suppose the unanswerable question, as usual, is when the technology will work well enough, and be cheap enough, for widespread adoption. At the moment nobody knows, not even insiders at waymo for example.

    • I still have yet to see a model where self-driving cars will cost the average car owner less

      It will be nice to sleep, read, or just daydream while the car drives itself.

      My spouse has a Tesla, and she occasionally lets me drive it. I get on the freeway and enable Autopilot. I still need to pay attention, but it is much less stressful than driving myself.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      This, the lefitist utopian day dreams don't get it. They are as off the mark as the far right dentists are. The reality is subscribing to transportation is a step backwards. Right now we live in a society where I have my own car, its ready and waiting for me I walk out to the garage any time I want and go anywhere I want. This as attainable for a large part of middle class society. Moving to a state where that privilege is less available no matter how many wizbang computer stuff you hang off it shows soci

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        They are as off the mark as the far right dentists are.

        That should have been far right denialists

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          That should have been far right denialists

          OK, I was wondering why you considered my daughter (DDS) far right ;)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        I read earlier this morning AmiMoJo (of course) posting about pricing to shift electrical demand to make renewable work. Again a society in decline a step backwards.

        Electricity pricing to shift electrical demand has been used for at least the 40 years I've been designing HVAC systems.

    • Why would anyone ever subscribe to transportation? How does that delight anyone?

      Delight? It only has to serve.

      Lots of people lease vehicles because it makes economic sense. Why wouldn't they simply pay for transport, and leave the details up to someone else?

      I see self driving cars making transportation accessible to people who currently cannot drive, which is good, but it is going to be at the sacrifice of people who currently enjoy the freedom of personal driving today.

      Why would it? You will be permitted to drive for, if not the foreseeable future, at least most of it. Not that you really get all that much freedom out of driving in most cases.

    • Self driving cars may improve things a lot for marginally capable drivers: People with bad eye sight, people with bad muscle control, the young, the old and the infirm. It is not just for execs checking their phone messages while driving, but those are also in the marginally capable group.

      • Right I specifically mentioned that - it will increase accessibility of transportation, no question, and that's definitely a benefit. When thinking about cost, there are some things that aren't available at all today, so making them available could be worth its cost, especially for those that now have a product to serve their needs. But this is a tricky one, because it adds new availability, but also likely adding cost to the "existing" availability.

        I should disclaim that I'm not anti-autonomy, I'm just no

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Why would anyone ever subscribe to transportation? How does that delight anyone?

      Lots of people subscribe for transportation.

      Example - car sharing programs. I know in most of the US it's hard to fathom, but there are places where you do not need a car 100% of the time. If you only need to drive once a week, why are you paying for a car to sit in the driveway the other 6 days of the week? You want to get errands done, you use your feet, or a bike, as it's all close by. You use the car for the few errands that

  • To be at the cutting of edge of something, anything, no-really-anything, if you're going to make credible claims about autonomous vehicles. I would absolutely love to see a major US auto manufacturer take the lead again on something, anything, no-really-I-mean-anything.

  • Stop posting this low quality garbage.

  • Is this some new business-speak of which I was gleefully unaware? A new box for Buzzword Bingo?

    I don't like it. It is deserving of scorn and derision.

  • So I guess we can safely assume it will fly and be fusion powered.

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