GM’s Mary Barra Bets Big on an Electric, Self-Driving Future

Though I generally respect Cruise's efforts this quote from Dan Ammann who is now Cruise's adult minder from Detroit had me hysterically laughing:

“If you don’t have thousands of engineers working on this, and billions of dollars of capital to spend, and deep integration with a car company, then your chances of success are very, very low,” he says, speaking in one of Cruise’s six offices around San Francisco.

You realize in the last forty years how often that thinking has been wrong? I agree it's the safe bet but coming so quickly after the smartest people in the room went bankrupt in 2008 you'd almost have to assume they didn't learn a thing from that.

If you want to make a counter bet go with George Hotz and his merry band of pranksters from comma.ai. I'm actually thinking quite seriously of installing one of his boxes when I buy a new car next year.

Ford is making a risky alternative bet. Instead of putting all their resources towards electric vehicles instead they're hedging the bet and developing both a hybrid vehicle as well as an electric one.

Either they know why the Chevy Volt failed or they're condemning themselves to failure.

Tesla is having a hard time these days, but if Elon was at all serious a few years ago he can know he made all the major car makers start to retool.

I never would have thought GM, Ford, and etc. would so seriously commit to making EVs even in the face of all the obvious reasons Elon would publicly explain.