Ford Rival GM Pumps $850 Million Into Troubled AV Unit

After dissolving Argo AI despite investing in the commercial autonomous company heavily over the years, Ford shifted gears and is instead choosing to focus on Level 3 self-driving tech rather than Level 4 and 5 after coming to the realization that the latter won’t be profitable any time soon. However, Ford then formed a new autonomous tech company called Latitude AI to further those efforts. Meanwhile, Ford’s cross-town rival – GM – has had its fair share of issues with its own autonomous company called Cruise, though it continues to invest in that unit as well.

GM has been dealing with a PR nightmare ever since one of its Cruise AVs trapped and drug a pedestrian down the road after that person was hit by another vehicle last year, and since then, the automaker has slashed the company’s budget on multiple occasions and shaken up its executive structure. That include cuts in the hundreds of millions this past November, and in February, GM announced that it was trimming another $1 billion from that budget in 2024. However, GM Authority is now reporting that Cruise has now received more money, not less, from its parent company.

General Motors will invest $850 million into Cruise, according to Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Paul Jacobson, who stated that these funds would keep the unit going while GM performs a “strategic review” of its long-term future. To date, GM has invested around $8 billion in Cruise, which has yet to generate any sort of substantial revenue in return.

Cruise just began operations once again following a pause stemming from the aforementioned fatal accident, which occurred last October. It’s currently operating in California, Arizona, and Texas, with plans to expand to various other cities in the coming months, but will do so with supervised drivers behind the wheel, for now.

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