Another company dumps $10 billion only to abandon the project.

Remember when Apple was going to crush Tesla as it was designing an autonomous electric vehicle. Earlier this year, we got news that Apple was pulling the plug on the project, after putting in $10 billion.

Fortunately, for that company, that is not a significant amount. When you are sitting on hundreds of billions in investments, that is nothing more than a round error.

The same is not true for General Motors. This company is in trouble yet most of the industry refuses to acknowledge it.

Its latest move is the decision to stop the funding for Cruise.

Source

GM Admits Tesla Was Right

This is more than a financial decision. What we are dealing with is a complete misread on the market and the technology.

It starts with the admission that end-to-end is the path to autonomy. This is something that Tesla started to pursue more than 5 years ago, to the ridicule of the so called experts.

What is evident is Tesla was correct, that LIDAR is not the route to take. The challenge, with this realization, is the fact that companies are far behind. It is one of the realities that GM decided to deal with.

Another admission is the fact that it is a very expensive to run a robotaxi network. This is something that most would understand so it shouldn't come as a complete surprise.

Could this be cover for something more sinister at GM, i.e. the fact that money is getting tight?

Ultimately, Tesla FSD is proving to be superior.

GM Licensing Tesla FSD

Three years ago, Mary Barra claimed that GM was the leading company in autonomy. She highlighted Cruise as the autonomy leader and how nobody was close to her company.

So the company went from leading in 2021 to eliminating the entire project?

Does that sound sensible? To me, it sounds like there was a lot of hype back then and GM was not the leader in autonomy. If nothing else, it was a good publicity stunt. Wall Street ate it up, as it always does.

As an aside, Xpeng is doing away with Lidar.

In 2023, we saw a flood of manufacturers partnering with Tesla on charging. It got to the point where the Tesla standard is now what the industry is defaulting to.

Which brings up the next phase of this: FSD licensing.

General Motors will be in the game of autonomy due to its ability to license FSD. Tesla is going to solve it, providing a general solution, which allows for scaling. This means that it could license the technology out to other manufacturers.

The major difference is that Tesla is already building a platform which to operate the business on. It appears that GM did not exactly think this out.

Tesla is even developing autonomous cleaning services from which it will also make money on.

It is no longer about simply building vehicles.

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