Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors, said Tuesday that a veteran of the video game industry will become its new chief executive, eight months after its previous chief executive resigned following a series of safety issues with its vehicles. .
The appointment of Marc Whitten, who was most recently an executive at video game technology company Unity, follows a tumultuous year for Cruise, which was ordered by California regulators in October to take its fleet of vehicles off the road after a series of traffic accidents. . The worst incident was on October 2, when a pedestrian was swept under a Cruise car on a San Francisco street.
Cruise has since laid off a quarter of its workforce and pushed out nine executives.
Mr Whitten, who will take over on July 16, was also a founding engineer at Xbox and a general manager at Amazon. He will join Mo Elshenawy, Cruise president and chief technology officer, and Craig Glidden, Cruise president and chief executive officer, who were appointed by Cruise’s board in November to lead the company following the resignation of Kyle Vogt, the previous CEO of Cruise.
“It is an opportunity of a lifetime to be part of this transformation,” Mr Whitten said in a statement. “The Cruise team has built world-class technology, and I look forward to working with them to help deliver this critical mission.”
Since Mr. Vogt’s resignation, Cruise has been slow to restart operations, a far cry from its rapid expansion to 15 cities in 10 states a year ago. In May, Cruise executives told The New York Times that they were in no rush to get back on the road and that safety was Cruise’s “North Star.”
GM acquired Cruise for $1.6 billion in 2016.
Cruise also hired Nick Mulholland, who worked for electric car maker Rivian, as its new head of communications and marketing. Mr. Elshenawy and Mr. Glidden will remain with the company and report to Mr. Whitten, the company said in a statement.
In a separate announcement, GM appointed Grant Dixton, who also comes from the video game industry, as its new executive vice president and chief legal and public officer. Mr. Dixton previously worked for Activision Blizzard in a senior leadership role.
