Southfield, Mich.—Next year, General Motors Co. will no longer need an engineer in the front seat babysitting the robot brain that controls its self-driving Chevrolet Bolt. The steering wheel and pedals will be gone, giving total control to the machine.When GM starts testing its autonomous electric sedan in San Francisco ride-sharing fleets, it’ll likely be the first production-ready car on the roads without the tools to let a human assume control. The announcement Friday is the first sign from a major carmaker that engineers have enough confidence in self-driving cars to let them truly go it alone.“What’s really special about this is if you look back 20 years from now, it’s the first car without a steering wheel and pedals,” said Kyle Vogt, chief executive officer of Cruise Automation, the San Francisco-based unit developing the software for GM’s self-driving cars. Read more: GM wants to drive the future of cars that drive themselves … [Read more...] about GM drops the steering wheel and gives robot driver full control
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GM just revealed a fully autonomous electric car that doesn’t have a steering wheel
General Motors revealed its fourth-generation self-driving vehicle. It has no traditional manual controls. The automaker expects to roll it out in 2019. No driver. No pedals. No steering wheel. Just seats and screens and doors that can close themselves. That’s what riders will see when they get into one of General Motors’ Cruise self-driving electric vehicles, scheduled to hit the road in 2019. On Thursday, the automaker also stressed that the fully autonomous vehicle would emphasize safety – and went into great detail on the hows and whys, including redundant systems intended to replace a human driver. On a conference call with reporters, GM President Dan Ammann said that the vehicle is the fourth generation of the vehicle to emerge from the carmaker’s Cruise division. GM acquired what was then Cruise Automation, a Silicon Valley startup, in 2016. “We’re super excited to share this point in … [Read more...] about GM just revealed a fully autonomous electric car that doesn’t have a steering wheel
GM says it’s mass-producing cars without steering wheels
DETROIT: General Motors says it is making the first mass-production autonomous car without a steering wheel or pedals. The company says it has filed a petition with the federal government seeking permission to put the vehicles on the road sometime next year with no human backup drivers.GM's Cruise Automation unit has announced plans to carry passengers in self-driving cars that won't have a backup driver in 2019. The location of the service has not been revealed.GM spokesman Kevin Kelly says the first of the autonomous Chevrolet Bolt is being tested. He says the company isn't announcing how many will be made.Waymo, which used to be the autonomous car arm of Alphabet Inc's Google, has made a limited number of autonomous vehicles without steering wheels and pedals. … [Read more...] about GM says it’s mass-producing cars without steering wheels
Mary Barra was called a ‘lightweight’ when she became CEO of GM — here’s how she transformed the company and silenced her doubters
CEO Mary Barra has transformed General Motors by cutting unprofitable ventures and investing in the future. Her focus on efficiency and efficacy has driven the decisions she’s made in over 35 years of working at the company. Post-bankruptcy, GM has become consistently profitable, built up a healthy balance sheet, and become a leader in electric and autonomous car technology. When General Motors CEO Mary Barra was the company’s vice president of global human resources, she thought the company’s dress code was too complicated. So she condensed it to two words: “Dress appropriately.” It was a simple idea, but not an easy one, as the managers beneath her complained that their employees were taking advantage of the rule change and coming to work in unprofessional attire. In two cases she recounted in 2015, she told the managers to be honest with their employees and tell them about their … [Read more...] about Mary Barra was called a ‘lightweight’ when she became CEO of GM — here’s how she transformed the company and silenced her doubters
Baseball GMs turning to emojis to make deals
In the annals of texting, $38 million (U.S.) doesn’t often change hands with a few taps of the thumb. And yet, that’s exactly what happened this off-season when the Miami Marlins sent Dee Gordon and the money left on his contract to the Seattle Mariners.It started before the annual meeting of general managers in November, when Jerry Dipoto, the GM of the Seattle Mariners, called Michael Hill, the president of baseball operations for the Marlins, to inquire about Gordon’s availability. At the general managers’ meetings, they spoke again. At length.But weeks later, when it came time to complete the trade, a problem emerged: Dipoto was going to be on a plane for several hours, flying to Seattle. So, using the airplane’s Wi-Fi, Dipoto fired text messages back and forth with Hill to finish a deal that would send Gordon to Seattle in exchange for several prospects.“I’ll call you when we’re on the ground, but we’re good on this end,” … [Read more...] about Baseball GMs turning to emojis to make deals