The company is looking to rehire former Cruise employees as it aims to offer a fully autonomous vehicle
- GM is said to be making a renewed push for fully autonomous vehicles.
- Some former Cruise employees could be rehired as the company looks to beef up staffing.
- The effort is said to be focused on privately owned vehicles rather than robotaxis.
GM is an autonomous driving pioneer as Super Cruise was introduced in 2017 and the company was working on an autonomous robotaxi known as the Cruise Origin. While the company continues to improve the former, Cruise effectively died last December.
At the time, General Motors said they were realigning their autonomous driving strategy to prioritize development of advanced driver assistance systems for personal vehicles. The automaker also decided to absorb some of Cruise’s teams and technology.
More: GM Gives Up On Cruise, Ends Robotaxi Push
While that was supposed to be the end of things, Bloomberg is reporting the company is making a renewed push to develop autonomous vehicles. As part of this effort, they’re reportedly looking to rehire some former Cruise employees.
The move appears to be the brainchild of Sterling Anderson, who led Tesla’s Autopilot team and co-founded Aurora before joining GM as chief product officer in May. Given his experience with autonomous driving technology, he reportedly believes it’s the future and is looking to secure GM’s leadership position.
With that goal in mind, the company is reportedly looking to rehire some of the roughly 1,000 employees who were let go. It’s not immediately clear how many, but the company reportedly wants to develop a fully autonomous vehicle.
A spokesperson told the publication, “We’re accelerating the development of autonomous driving technology capable of operating without active human oversight.” This seems to suggest the company is focused on a Level 3 or Level 4 system, which could operate without any human interaction under certain conditions. From there, the automaker would presumably chase a fully autonomous Level 5 system.
