GM's Cruise Names Former Amazon, Microsoft Xbox Executive As New CEO (cnbc.com) 6
Cruise, the autonomous vehicle unit from General Motors, named Amazon and Microsoft executive Marc Whitten as its new CEO, replacing former CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt. CNBC reports: Whitten was a founding engineer at Microsoft's Xbox before leaving the company after more than 17 years to become chief product officer of audio company Sonos in 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile. He then worked at Amazon as vice president of entertainment devices and services before his most recent role as chief product and technology officer for software development company Unity's Create.
His appointment comes at a crucial time for Cruise, which is testing and relaunching its autonomous vehicles on public roadways. It ceased operations weeks after an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi. A third-party probe into the October incident ordered by GM and Cruise found that culture issues, ineptitude and poor leadership fueled regulatory oversights that led to the accident. The probe also investigated allegations of a cover-up by Cruise leadership, but investigators did not find evidence to support those claims.
During that time, San Francisco-based Cruise was attempting to expand its operations into a revenue-generating business for GM, which has been a majority owner of the company since acquiring it in 2016. Other investors now include Honda Motor, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, and Walmart. As of this month, Cruise has resumed supervised driving in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas, in addition to its ongoing testing in Dubai. It has not relaunched in San Francisco, where it remains under investigation related to the accident.
His appointment comes at a crucial time for Cruise, which is testing and relaunching its autonomous vehicles on public roadways. It ceased operations weeks after an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi. A third-party probe into the October incident ordered by GM and Cruise found that culture issues, ineptitude and poor leadership fueled regulatory oversights that led to the accident. The probe also investigated allegations of a cover-up by Cruise leadership, but investigators did not find evidence to support those claims.
During that time, San Francisco-based Cruise was attempting to expand its operations into a revenue-generating business for GM, which has been a majority owner of the company since acquiring it in 2016. Other investors now include Honda Motor, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, and Walmart. As of this month, Cruise has resumed supervised driving in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas, in addition to its ongoing testing in Dubai. It has not relaunched in San Francisco, where it remains under investigation related to the accident.
Losers (Score:4, Insightful)
Cruise doesn't know how to launch and scale a product. Neither does this loser. They need to get someone who gives a shit about cars and actually believes in an autonomous/ADAS future. Unless there's something more here that isn't visible, they've hired some "product iteration" loser who seems to be jumping from thing to thing chasing money and prestige. This dude seems like a quarterly report guy.
no 'must work' experience (Score:3)
Seems to me all this guy's previous projects are places where software malfunctions (not just "crash quietly" but also "do the wrong thing") have no consequences. And That's A Bad Thing. If you've never had to implement something where the consequences of failure are more than "oh, shit! and reboot", you just don't know how to evaluate the -processes- required to get to mission critical, let alone safety critical levels of assurance.
But more importantly, the people who hired this guy are even more clueless. But that just reinforces what I've thought about GM, particularly after Mary Barra's "no more 3rd party car systems" (Google or Apple). Seems this falls in line with Boeing's transition from an engineering focused company to a financial results focused company. GM is transitioning from a "delivered products" company to "it's OK to crash, we'll just do it over again" company.
The Sonos Hitch... (Score:2)
...ought to make that guy radioactive.
single handle destroyed Unity (Score:1)
Conjoined Triangles of Success (Score:2)