I’m not sure I’m going to suddenly have a retail vehicle that doesn’t have steering wheels and pedals in it, but we do think about that. It is our responsibility. I don’t see autonomous vehicles taking over and changing, widely, the distribution of people; I see them solving the problems of safety and congestion and emissions first, and then maybe someday that happens. Cities are built around where people live and work, and I just don’t see that changing overnight.
that’s being investigated by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. How do you create a positive safety culture at Cruise? First of all, everything’s monitored. There are no big mysteries on what’s happening there. Without getting into the detail of that one incident, I would say everything can always be better. We’re driving these cars, and these cars are driving themselves, in a human environment. I’ll take a complaint like, “It took me a little longer to get there than it may have under other circumstances, but it took the safest route, and it managed the interfaces with human drivers better than what I thought.
I’d also say, the culture in GM on safety is very different than it was five years ago, 10 years ago. We have a system in place that looks at data every day from our fleet; I don’t care what kind of car it is. If we think this is something that could happen again, we’ll do a very deep statistical analysis on what the problem is, the surroundings, the circumstances. There’s a formal forum that happens every week. And we’ll make the decisions.
Very insightful, those who can do this are the wise leaders.