Driverless Cars ‘No Longer a Thing of the Distant Future,’ Says Top GM Engineer

Autonomous cars are "no longer a thing of the distant future, and that future is happening now,” Pam Fletcher, General Motors executive chief engineer, told the Citi 2016 Global Technology Conference Tuesday in New York. “Autonomy will fundamentally change the way our customers interact with our vehicles,” and will provide “many potential benefits,” Fletcher said. For example, customers “enjoy and desire the convenience of car-based transportation,” but not everyone “can operate a car, so autonomous vehicles provide them with an option,” she said. But “absolutely safety" is the most important benefit GM sees from driverless cars, she said. More than 35,000 people die every year on U.S. roads, and more than 90 percent “of those deaths are caused by human error, so autonomous vehicles can have a real impact on saving lives,” she said. GM’s $581 million acquisition of Cruise Automation in March (see 1607220003) “provides us with a team of talented software engineers who are creating the algorithms and the code to bring full autonomy to life and deliver autonomous technology in an on-demand ride-sharing service,” Fletcher said. What really attracted GM to Cruise was not only its autonomous-driving capabilities, but also that they were being developed “literally on the downtown streets of San Francisco,” she said. As an autonomous-driving test bed, San Francisco is “one of the most complex environments to try to build and deploy new technology,” she said. GM thinks “the right answer for deployment of autonomous vehicles is in a ride-shared network,” Fletcher said. GM’s $500 million January investment in Lyft included a “long-term” alliance on autonomous vehicles (see 1601040068). The strategy “provides a great opportunity to have a very orderly rollout” of driverless cars because “it gives an opportunity for consumers to experience the vehicle without a commitment for purchase,” and getting “all their questions answered,” she said.