Mo Elshenawy, formerly executive vice president of engineering at Cruise, was announced as Cruise's new president and CTO. Vogt declared his departure in a post on X Sunday night without specifying a motive, saying he planned to focus on his family and think about other projects. This follows a series of errors from Cruise.
Kyle Vogt, CEO and co-founder of Cruise (owned by General Motors), has vacated his role, as CNBC was informed in a company statement on Sunday. Taking his place as President and CTO will be Mo Elshenawy, the former Executive VP of Engineering for Cruise. Vogt acknowledged his resignation on social media website X, and did not state a reason for the departure apart from wanting to spend time with family and explore new ideas. He encouraged the Cruise employees, expressing confidence in the organization's plans and prospects.
Various issues have recently arisen with Cruise, such as a voluntary recall of 950 robotaxis, and the suspension of self-driving car activities on public roads. This followed several events that generated harsh reactions from first responders, labor activists, and municipal authorities, especially in San Francisco. One serious example was when a pedestrian was struck by another vehicle at night and sent to the path of a Cruise car, which proceeded to drive over and drag them.
In response to this, the California DMV suspended Cruise's autonomous vehicle testing and deployment permits. The DMV stated that if there is an unreasonable danger to public safety, they can swiftly revoke or suspend permits. The suspension document also accused Cruise of failing to provide a detailed explanation of what happened in the pedestrian collision.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is assessing Cruise to ascertain if its automated driving systems gave adequate consideration to pedestrians in the roadway, as specified in a filing on the agency's website. In 2016, GM acquired Cruise and then brought on investors such as Honda Motor, Softbank Vision Fund and Walmart and Microsoft more recently. Nonetheless, GM procured SoftBank's equity interest for $2.1 billion in the past year. GM top execs, including CEO and Chair Mary Barra, were hoping that the startup would be launching a driverless transportation network this year and anticipated Cruise to have a major part in the doubling of the company's revenue within the next decade. In October 2021, GM expressed that it predicted its related "new businesses" like Cruise and BrightDrop commercial EV business to advance from $2 billion to $80 billion from then to 2030. Reportedly, GM has lost around $1.9 billion on Cruise between January and September 2023, among which $732 million was in the third quarter only. Barra is also the chair of the Cruise board of directors and former Tesla and Lyft executive Jon McNeill, who became a member of GM's board of directors since 2022, was named vice chairman of Cruise's board after Vogt's resignation. In response to this, Alex Roy from transportation consultancy Johnson & Roy said to CNBC, "Responsibility starts at the top. If Cruise is going to survive, and they have great technology there, the CEO had to go.""I presume one more high-level executive must step down - anyone who gave the order to hide or omit data in communication with the California DMV," he added. "In my opinion, Cruise has been too sluggish in taking steps to restore trust with staff, regulators, and the public. Management changes are a must."Vogt's resignation comes roughly two years after he was appointed again as CEO, following an unexpected departure by Dan Ammann, a former GM executive, in December 2021. Ammann, who had been an investment banker before, took the lead of Cruise in 2019 and was credited with acquiring it in 2016.
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