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I'm in Michigan and I've watched the auto industry close up for a long time. I've got friends at the Big 3. GM decided it was better to put an adult in charge

by rmason 5y ago

I'm in Michigan and I've watched the auto industry close up for a long time. I've got friends at the Big 3. GM decided it was better to put an adult in charge of Cruise. Someone they trusted and they thought had a clue on tech. Turns out it didn't work well. GM learned the hard way the founder was the best CEO of Cruise. There's a lot they do not understand about how startups and Silicon Valley work.

jowday 5y ago
If anything, I got the impression Dan had a pretty good handle on the technical aspects of Cruise and the path forward for the company, and that the GM CEO fired him because she didn't like what she was hearing from him. Dan wanted to pursue expanding Cruise robotaxis, while Mary Barra wanted to find ways to integrate Cruise's technology into consumer GM cars - that's not how Cruise/Waymo/Zoox-style robotaxis work, and any such integration would necessarily involve rewriting a huge portion of the stack. There was also reporting that Kyle was offered this role immediately after Dan was fired but turned it down, opting to remain interim CEO while they searched for a replacement. Looks like something has changed, or they couldn't find a suitable replacement.
- ajross 5y ago
  > [integrating] Cruise's technology into consumer GM cars [is] not how Cruise/Waymo/Zoox-style robotaxis work, and any such integration would necessarily involve rewriting a huge portion of the stack. That sounds like a [citation needed] to me. Surely there are UI problems to be solved in a car with a human being in the driver's seat, but the sensors and automation decisionmaking is going to be identical, and that's where the hard parts are. Or alternatively: a less charitable way of making the point work would be to say that Cruise's stack was a bunch of special-case hacks for specific regions and vehicles and wasn't scalable to arbitrary environments nor regular passenger cars.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jowday 5y ago
    I work in the AV space, so I guess you’ll just have to trust me. I assume Cruise internals look very similar to the internals at other AV companies, which I think is a safe assumption. >The sensors and automation decisionmaking is going to be identical, and that's where the hard parts are. Sensors will be very different. LIDAR prices are coming down but we’re still a while off from incorporating it into consumer vehicles - and we’re way, way off from incorporating multiple high resolution, long range LIDAR pucks, plus short range LIDAR to cover blind spots, plus imaging radar, plus thermal cameras, etc. into commercial cars the way they’re integrated into Cruise cars right now. Automotive decision making will also be extremely different. Modern robotaxis rely on very high detail HD maps that are continuously updated. It’s impossible to scale that nationwide in a way that would work in a consumer car. Fundamental parts of the stack assume these maps are present and accurate - remove that assumption and a ton of things have to be rethought from first principles. Remote support is also a key part of AV stacks - that is, asking a human to clarify an ambiguous situation. There’s a video where Kyle says that Cruise cars request remote support approximately every 5 minutes. Again, fundamental parts of the stack rely on the availability of remote support and have to be rethought from first principles if it’s removed. This isn’t even getting into the differences in compute on a Crusie car and a consumer car. >Or alternatively: a less charitable way of making the point work would be to say that Cruise's stack was a bunch of special-case hacks for specific regions and vehicles and wasn't scalable to arbitrary environments nor regular passenger cars. I mean you’re not wrong, but you can’t create a robotaxi without this. ML models just aren’t capable enough to handle edge cases in a safe way without tons of hacks in place.
    - 8ytecoder 5y ago
      But that’s not what Tesla is doing! You’re absolutely right and it’s also a safer route (for others on the road) to go with robotaxis first. This is precisely why you can’t focus too much on competitors. GM and their CEO (who seems to be really smart) is focusing on Tesla here and trying to compete with them.
      - jowday 5y ago
        Tesla isn’t focused on robotaxis - they’re focused on trying to sell a premium ADAS feature their CEO over promised half a decade ago. Whcih is necessarily designed very differently from a robotaxi. It doesn’t make sense to try to force a stack built for robotaxis into a consumer ADAS car because you’d have to fundamentally rewrite the stack anyways. This is why GM had its own ADAS team while Cruise focused on robotaxis. I’m sure they’re looking at Teslas market cap and hoping they can generate hype by trying to say they’ll integrate Cruise tech, but that’s just not how these stacks works.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Not going to give my name for obvious reasons, but formerly at Cruise. Any sufficiently complex system has lots of hidden assumptions that aren't trivial to unwind when changing problem domains. I can think of at least a few design decisions I personally made that will have to revisited for personal vehicles. It's not impossible, but still nontrivial.
- cyrux004 5y ago
  I have been keep tracking of the story as an outsider and this is my impression as well
- mikeryan 5y ago
  GM was also ready to get into bed with Nikola which was an obvious pile of bullshit even before the Hindenburg report. I’d not want to be the one holding the bag there while management scrambles to catch up. Probably the best for him to get out now.
wutbrodo 5y ago
> Turns out it didn't work well. GM learned the hard way the founder was the best CEO of Cruise. There's a lot they do not understand about how startups and Silicon Valley work. I'd be hesitant to generalize this lesson. Another case of "adult supervision", in that case against the wishes of the founders, was.... Eric Schmidt at Google. Say what you want about Google, but it's difficult to say that they weren't successful under his tenure (2001-2011)
reTensor 5y ago
Kyle Vogt was removed from the CEO position in late 2018 after Cruise failed to make progress toward a number of milestones. The milestones were outlined as part of the Cruise acquisition. Dan Ammann took over and made really substantial progress. Ammann is widely considered to be the reason Cruise is where it is today. His record of success was in sharp contrast to Vogt's consistent record of failure. Unfortunately, Ammann disagreed with GM's CEO about Cruise's future as a business. Employees at my level of seniority don't know the details, but many of us are skeptical that Kyle is the right man for the job.
- technofiend 5y ago
  At least according to Tech Crunch it was because Ammann also failed to deliver something on Barra's agenda [1]: And while Ammann continued to push the company to expand, there were missed targets, notably the plan to launch a commercial robotaxi business in 2019. The company has spent the past two years inching toward that commercialization goal, along with the rest of the industry, which has gone through a spate of consolidation. Most likely that's a lot harder to get done than anyone thinks. Is Vogt really the guy to make it happen? I guess we'll find out. But GM sending an otherwise successful VP packing after more than a decade there signals they are looking to shake things up. GM is not Silicon Valley and even senior execs IMHO enjoy longer tenures that you'd find in the Valley. They also skipped over the whole reassigning him to another role / oh he's left to pursue other interests tap dancing you often see to give people some runway or cover to leave. Not sure whether to read anything into that or if that's just how Barra operates. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/16/longtime-gm-exec-dan-ammann-is-out-as-cruise-ceo/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/16/longtime-gm-exec-dan-amman...
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    [deleted]
  - reTensor 5y ago
    The failure to launch in 2019 was shortly after Ammann took over (late 2018). Ammann inherited Vogt's mess, and at that time nobody in management fully understood how bad the situation was. Ammann promptly began fixing things and we see the fruits of that today. Ammann's departure, to the best of our knowledge, is a result of a conflict with GM's CEO regarding the future of Cruise as a business. Hopefully Vogt can preserve, and successfully build on, what Ammann accomplished.

by rmason 5y ago

jowday 5y ago

If anything, I got the impression Dan had a pretty good handle on the technical aspects of Cruise and the path forward for the company, and that the GM CEO fired him because she didn't like what she was hearing from him. Dan wanted to pursue expanding Cruise robotaxis, while Mary Barra wanted to find ways to integrate Cruise's technology into consumer GM cars - that's not how Cruise/Waymo/Zoox-style robotaxis work, and any such integration would necessarily involve rewriting a huge portion of the stack. There was also reporting that Kyle was offered this role immediately after Dan was fired but turned it down, opting to remain interim CEO while they searched for a replacement. Looks like something has changed, or they couldn't find a suitable replacement.

ajross 5y ago
> [integrating] Cruise's technology into consumer GM cars [is] not how Cruise/Waymo/Zoox-style robotaxis work, and any such integration would necessarily involve rewriting a huge portion of the stack. That sounds like a [citation needed] to me. Surely there are UI problems to be solved in a car with a human being in the driver's seat, but the sensors and automation decisionmaking is going to be identical, and that's where the hard parts are. Or alternatively: a less charitable way of making the point work would be to say that Cruise's stack was a bunch of special-case hacks for specific regions and vehicles and wasn't scalable to arbitrary environments nor regular passenger cars.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jowday 5y ago
  I work in the AV space, so I guess you’ll just have to trust me. I assume Cruise internals look very similar to the internals at other AV companies, which I think is a safe assumption. >The sensors and automation decisionmaking is going to be identical, and that's where the hard parts are. Sensors will be very different. LIDAR prices are coming down but we’re still a while off from incorporating it into consumer vehicles - and we’re way, way off from incorporating multiple high resolution, long range LIDAR pucks, plus short range LIDAR to cover blind spots, plus imaging radar, plus thermal cameras, etc. into commercial cars the way they’re integrated into Cruise cars right now. Automotive decision making will also be extremely different. Modern robotaxis rely on very high detail HD maps that are continuously updated. It’s impossible to scale that nationwide in a way that would work in a consumer car. Fundamental parts of the stack assume these maps are present and accurate - remove that assumption and a ton of things have to be rethought from first principles. Remote support is also a key part of AV stacks - that is, asking a human to clarify an ambiguous situation. There’s a video where Kyle says that Cruise cars request remote support approximately every 5 minutes. Again, fundamental parts of the stack rely on the availability of remote support and have to be rethought from first principles if it’s removed. This isn’t even getting into the differences in compute on a Crusie car and a consumer car. >Or alternatively: a less charitable way of making the point work would be to say that Cruise's stack was a bunch of special-case hacks for specific regions and vehicles and wasn't scalable to arbitrary environments nor regular passenger cars. I mean you’re not wrong, but you can’t create a robotaxi without this. ML models just aren’t capable enough to handle edge cases in a safe way without tons of hacks in place.
  - 8ytecoder 5y ago
    But that’s not what Tesla is doing! You’re absolutely right and it’s also a safer route (for others on the road) to go with robotaxis first. This is precisely why you can’t focus too much on competitors. GM and their CEO (who seems to be really smart) is focusing on Tesla here and trying to compete with them.
    - jowday 5y ago
      Tesla isn’t focused on robotaxis - they’re focused on trying to sell a premium ADAS feature their CEO over promised half a decade ago. Whcih is necessarily designed very differently from a robotaxi. It doesn’t make sense to try to force a stack built for robotaxis into a consumer ADAS car because you’d have to fundamentally rewrite the stack anyways. This is why GM had its own ADAS team while Cruise focused on robotaxis. I’m sure they’re looking at Teslas market cap and hoping they can generate hype by trying to say they’ll integrate Cruise tech, but that’s just not how these stacks works.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Not going to give my name for obvious reasons, but formerly at Cruise. Any sufficiently complex system has lots of hidden assumptions that aren't trivial to unwind when changing problem domains. I can think of at least a few design decisions I personally made that will have to revisited for personal vehicles. It's not impossible, but still nontrivial.
cyrux004 5y ago
I have been keep tracking of the story as an outsider and this is my impression as well
mikeryan 5y ago
GM was also ready to get into bed with Nikola which was an obvious pile of bullshit even before the Hindenburg report. I’d not want to be the one holding the bag there while management scrambles to catch up. Probably the best for him to get out now.

wutbrodo 5y ago

> Turns out it didn't work well. GM learned the hard way the founder was the best CEO of Cruise. There's a lot they do not understand about how startups and Silicon Valley work. I'd be hesitant to generalize this lesson. Another case of "adult supervision", in that case against the wishes of the founders, was.... Eric Schmidt at Google. Say what you want about Google, but it's difficult to say that they weren't successful under his tenure (2001-2011)

reTensor 5y ago

Kyle Vogt was removed from the CEO position in late 2018 after Cruise failed to make progress toward a number of milestones. The milestones were outlined as part of the Cruise acquisition. Dan Ammann took over and made really substantial progress. Ammann is widely considered to be the reason Cruise is where it is today. His record of success was in sharp contrast to Vogt's consistent record of failure. Unfortunately, Ammann disagreed with GM's CEO about Cruise's future as a business. Employees at my level of seniority don't know the details, but many of us are skeptical that Kyle is the right man for the job.

technofiend 5y ago
At least according to Tech Crunch it was because Ammann also failed to deliver something on Barra's agenda [1]: And while Ammann continued to push the company to expand, there were missed targets, notably the plan to launch a commercial robotaxi business in 2019. The company has spent the past two years inching toward that commercialization goal, along with the rest of the industry, which has gone through a spate of consolidation. Most likely that's a lot harder to get done than anyone thinks. Is Vogt really the guy to make it happen? I guess we'll find out. But GM sending an otherwise successful VP packing after more than a decade there signals they are looking to shake things up. GM is not Silicon Valley and even senior execs IMHO enjoy longer tenures that you'd find in the Valley. They also skipped over the whole reassigning him to another role / oh he's left to pursue other interests tap dancing you often see to give people some runway or cover to leave. Not sure whether to read anything into that or if that's just how Barra operates. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/16/longtime-gm-exec-dan-ammann-is-out-as-cruise-ceo/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/16/longtime-gm-exec-dan-amman...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- reTensor 5y ago
  The failure to launch in 2019 was shortly after Ammann took over (late 2018). Ammann inherited Vogt's mess, and at that time nobody in management fully understood how bad the situation was. Ammann promptly began fixing things and we see the fruits of that today. Ammann's departure, to the best of our knowledge, is a result of a conflict with GM's CEO regarding the future of Cruise as a business. Hopefully Vogt can preserve, and successfully build on, what Ammann accomplished.