General Motors remains steadfast in its belief of its Cruise autonomous vehicle unit with chief executive Mary Barra doubling down on her forecast that the unit could generate up to $50 billion in revenue each and every year by 2030.
While recently speaking at a Sanford Bernstein conference in Detroit, Michigan, Barra said there is a “giant growth opportunity” in Cruise. This comes despite Ford and VW shutting down their jointly-owned Argo AI self-driving car startup last year.
Barra believes that in addition to GM using Cruise to introduce personal self-driving cars to the market by the end of the decade, it will be able to generate significant revenues by expanding out of the United States into markets including Dubai and Japan, while also growing into goods delivery services.
Reuters notes that GM is losing approximately $2 billion a year on Cruise. Despite this, it recently expanded beyond its base in San Francisco to cities in Arizona and Texas. GM has also petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to give it the green light to introduce 2,500 examples of the fully-autonomous Origin test vehicle that doesn’t have a steering wheel or pedals.
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Barra also spoke about electric vehicles during the conference. She noted that the costs of EV batteries mean it is still too hard to build profitable mass-market vehicles and that the costs of building an EV won’t reach parity with an ICE until the “latter part of this decade…maybe a little longer.”
Then there’s China, the world’s largest car market. The CEO admitted that GM has been too slow to launch electric vehicles in China and that its local market share has slipped as a result. However, she noted that Chevrolet and Cadillac will launch EVs in the coming 18 months.
