GM’s CEO Mary Barra Fires Cruise CEO Dan Ammann

General Motors

General Motors (GM) CEO Mary Barra has fired Dan Ammann, the CEO of GM’s robotaxi startup Cruise LLC, Bloomberg reports.

GM controls Cruise through a majority stake.

Citing insiders at Cruise, Bloomberg claim Ammann’s sack had been building for months.

Bloomberg claimed Barra and Ammann didn’t agree on how to focus Cruise’s self-driving technology about to be launched with a taxi service.

While Barra and GM’s board focused on creating luxury Cadillacs, self-driving cars, and scaling GM’s new electric-van business, Ammann wanted to steer focus towards starting Cruise’s taxi business, and taking Cruise public.

Bloomberg recounts that Ammann once who once competed with Barra to run GM.

“Ultimately, the dispute was about control”, Bloomberg reported.

The split is an end to a long relationship between Barra and Ammann, who were the finalists for the top job at GM when Dan Akerson was looking for his replacement before retiring in 2014.

“Tension had been building for some time but the drama started amping up after a Cruise board meeting on Nov. 2.”, Bloomberg recounts.

“That’s when Barra made it clear that Cruise’s mission, in addition to its taxi business, was to develop technology for GM and create value for its shareholders.”

Share:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *