Re:I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again
by reTensor on Monday February 28, 2022 @05:33PM
(#30506095)
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.
Re:I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again
by omeze on Monday February 28, 2022 @05:50PM
(#30506261)
fully appreciate if you can't go into detail, but what changed? It seems like they'd always been working towards robotaxi-ing from a product perspective so it must have come down to execution-level stuff, no?
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-amman...