GM’s self-driving car division Cruise Automation has named Dan Ammann as chief executive. Cruise Automation was acquired by GM in 2016 and became known as the subsidiary GM Cruise.
Ammann is going to step down as the president of GM, which is a position he held since 2014. And Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt — who was CEO and handled CTO job roles is going to stay at the company following these changes. Effective January 1, 2019, Vogt is going to become the president and CTO of Cruise.
Prior to this shift in management, Ammann oversaw GM’s investment and acquisition of Cruise. And he regularly interacted with Vogt. Ammann is also known for taking GM public in 2010 while working as the vice president of finance and treasurer.
“Dan’s been my partner since General Motors’ initial investment in Cruise and I am thrilled he has agreed to join us full-time,” said Vogt in a statement. “Dan’s thorough understanding of our mission and his operational expertise make him the perfect fit to lead Cruise into commercial deployment.”
Cruise now has more than 1,000 employees at its headquarters in San Francisco. And the company is aggressively pursuing the launch of a robotaxi in 2019.
According to TechCrunch, Cruise is going to be opening an office in Seattle and hire up to 200 more engineers. Earlier this year, Cruise raised funding from Honda and SoftBank and now has a valuation at more than $14.6 billion.
“These appointments further demonstrate our commitment to transforming mobility through the safe deployment of self-driving technology and move us closer to our vision for a future with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion,” added GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra. “As we move toward commercial deployment, adding Dan to the strong team led by Kyle is the next step.”
Going forward, GM’s global regions and GM Financial is going to report to GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra .
