GM Struggles to Make Driverless Cars

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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GM Struggles to Make Driverless Cars

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The heads of all the world’s big car companies say that the future of the industry lies with electronic vehicles (EVs) and driverless cars. Some of these organizations have made impressive strides with EVs. Self-driving cars are another matter. They do not have adequate systems that keep the cars from crashing. That will make them hard to market. The manufacturer with the most recent self-driving car trouble is General Motors.
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The division within GM that handles its driverless car business has recalled the software used in some robotaxis. One of these had a crash this year that caused “minor injuries,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Depending on the breadth of the issue, this means that major accidents could be a potential problem.
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GM has upgraded the software that was the problem. The company’s representative said, “We submitted this voluntary filing in the interest of transparency to the public; it pertains to a prior version of software and does not impact or change our current on-road operations.” The statement should not give consumers comfort.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has posted a report that says driverless cars were involved in almost 400 accidents in the year before the report was issued. That is an astonishing number, given how few of these vehicles are currently on the road. These accidents have involved cars from several companies, including Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo.
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The driving public expects a degree of safety in the vehicles it drives. Driverless cars are a huge departure from the way Americans have driven cars for over a century. That makes adoption of new technology particularly difficult.
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GM is among the world’s largest manufacturers. When there is news about a driverless car crash, it undermines the efforts of the entire industry.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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