General Motors may be reducing its electric vehicle production, but the automaker wants investors to know it is still committed to future technologies like automated driving, software-defined vehicles and AI voice assistants. Today, GM CEO Mary Barra announced a series of new features coming to the company’s brands like Cadillac and Chevy that she said will help “define the next chapter” of America’s largest automaker.
The news comes after GM said it would lose $1.6 billion related to the planned rollout of EVs. The automaker blamed the loss on the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which was eliminated as part of President Donald Trump’s budget bill. Experts predict that EV sales will decline following the loss of credit, potentially jeopardizing America’s position as the world automotive leader.
But GM is trying to focus on autonomous driving, AI and advanced software as some potential ways the US can maintain its lead in the global race, especially as it continues to compete with rapidly advancing China.
Automated driving, software-defined vehicles and AI voice assistants
For starters, GM says it will introduce a Level 3 hands-free, eyes-away-from-highway driving feature to the Cadillac Escalade iQ in 2028. The company pioneered hands-free driving in 2017 with the release of its Level 2 Super Cruise. And now GM is ready to take things to the next level.
GM says the new Level 3 system will operate on all US highways – similar to the 750,000 miles covered by Super Cruise – and is supported by advanced perception and decision-making technology.
As defined by the Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE)Level 3 describes highly automated driving, where the driver still needs to be able to take control of the vehicle on request, but can also take their eyes off the road in some situations. It is not a fully autonomous system like Waymo, and often only operates at low speeds on mapped roads. Some experts have argued that L3 systems can be dangerous given the need for drivers to remain attentive despite the vehicle performing most of the driving work.
But in an interview The Verge‘S decoder podcast, GM’s new chief product officer, Sterling Andersonsaid the rollout of Level 3 driving will be defined by safety, as shown by the company’s track record with Super Cruise. Anderson, who previously worked at Tesla, where he led both the Model
“Our customers have driven more than 700 million hands-free miles with Super Cruise without a single accident because of the technology,” he said. “I led on autopilot. You can’t say that for autopilot.”
“I led on autopilot. You can’t say that for autopilot.”
GM is moving to Level 3 conditional autonomy following the failure of its Cruise robotaxi division, which was shut down earlier this year after the company botched its response to a pedestrian injury. GM has since re-hired several former Cruise employees to work on Super Cruise and its plans to eventually sell “personally owned” autonomous vehicles.
And starting next year, GM plans to introduce Google’s Gemini AI in its cars as a new, more conversational voice assistant. Other automakers have also said they plan to do something similar, including Volvo. But in the future, GM says it will introduce its own AI companion that will “tailor to your vehicle’s intelligence and personal preferences.”
“It’s about asking about your destination,” Anderson said. “It’s about asking about a lot of other things where it can give you relevant responses.”
Talking about software, GM says it hopes to introduce a new centralized computing platform in 2028, starting with the Escalade IQ. The automaker is calling it “a complete reimagining of how vehicles are designed, updated, and improved over time,” adding that it will include “10 times more over-the-air software update capability, 1,000 times more bandwidth, and 35 times more AI performance for autonomy and advanced features.” The new computing platform will be offered for both GM’s EV and internal combustion engine vehicles, the company said.
Anderson offered some more details in his interview decoder,
What it does from a networking standpoint is it moves toward Ethernet-based networking, which allows us to go to sub-millisecond response times, magnetic suspension systems or dampers, as your example, from the accelerometer through the controller back to the actuator. We’re talking less than a millisecond. You’re talking a thousand hertz, that’s a 10x improvement over previous electrical architectures. This is a big, broad opportunity not only for mobility, which I found General Motors to be exceptionally good at, but also for the software that we can deploy on it.
GM also shared an update on its robotics division, where 100 roboticists, AI engineers and hardware experts are building advanced robotics systems to boost its manufacturing processes. These factory robots are being trained on GM’s production data, including telemetry, quality metrics and sensor data, which will help feed a model that “improves with each manufacturing cycle.”
GM says it hopes to introduce a new centralized computing platform in 2028, starting with the Escalade iQ.
This work is currently being conducted at GM’s Autonomous Robotics Center (ARC) in Warren, Michigan, as well as a collaborative laboratory in Mountain View, California. is the center currently appointedLook for positions such as electrical systems architects and validation engineers to develop the next generation of automation software that can organize diverse robot fleets, assign tasks based on plant needs, and manage how people and machines move through facilities.
Anderson said GM currently has “30,000 robots working on orders for 97,000 production associates across 11 facilities.” Many of them are giant weapons that are “sitting in cages with E-stops outside that can’t work with humans in and around them because they’re just not designed for that,” he said.
GM’s future robots will look very different. “We are developing autonomous mobile robots that move materials through our factories,” Anderson said. “We have started deploying them.” GM is also developing collaborative robotic systems, or cobots, that can work alongside factory workers.
And finally, GM is announcing a new program to enable EV owners to send the backup energy in their vehicles’ batteries back to the grid. GM has touted this capability since launching its home energy and battery storage division, GM Energy, in 2022.
Many EVs with high-capacity batteries have the ability to serve as backup power in the event of a blackout. EVs can also send electricity back to the grid during times of peak demand. GM says that starting next year it will begin offering a new leasing model for the GM Energy Home System, which offers backup power, solar integration, and an integrated app to control everything.
