GM and Cruise announce world's first mass-produced self-driving car

General Motors announced that it is ready with the world's first mass-produced self-driving car. The self-driving car will have a driver, but Cruise said the car is capable of driving entirely on its own.

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said in his Medium post, "Today, we're unveiling the world's first mass-producible car designed to operate without a driver. This isn't just a concept design - it has airbags, crumple zones, and comfortable seats. It's assembled in a high-volume assembly plant capable of producing 100,000's of vehicles per year, and we'd like to keep that plant busy."

Doug Parks, GM’s VP of Autonomous Technology and Vehicle Execution, explained that he has been involved in the design of Volt, and Bolt EV. Throughout, they knew this could be a platform that eventually led toward autonomous capabilities. All were “on the way to enabling what Kyle just announced, the first mass-produced, autonomous high-volume car.” The car will be built at GM's plant in Orion, Michigan, using parts from the Chevrolet Bolt. It will have a steering wheel and redundancy systems in place in case of tech failures.

“It’s making the changes to the design so that we can build that on the line at Orion’s assembly center,” Parks explained, talking about how this includes working with suppliers to get parts ready and that was what was accomplished with its generation-two test cars. The vehicle will be based on a third generation Cruise self-driving platform.

Vogt added "The launch of the world’s first mass-producible driverless car is a major accomplishment, but we’re not across the finish line yet. Building a few of these self-driving vehicles, or even a few hundred, won’t accomplish what we set out to do."