In partnership with
Table of Contents
⚡ This Week’s Big Charge
💡 General Motors’ Big Technology Push, Explained
A woman cruises down the highway in her Cadillac with her eyes on a White Lotus episode playing on the center screen. An engineer works side-by-side with an adaptable robotic arm. A car shopper buys an electric pickup, and the gear that lets its battery power their home during a blackout.
This is the future that General Motors is pitching. In many ways, it’s actually the present. But at its GM Forward event in New York City this week, top executives shared a roadmap for the future. Whatever’s next, they say, will be about batteries, AI, autonomy and software—and will be more like a robot than a conventional car.
“A car is one of the most advanced pieces of technology you'll ever own,” said Sterling Anderson, GM’s Chief Product Officer, himself a veteran of Tesla and co-founder of self-driving trucking firm Aurora. “It's not often described as a robot, but that's what it is, and as we build this intelligence into it, it has to continue to work flawlessly at high speeds.”
I was among the reporters at GM’s event. There’s a lot to unpack. Here’s my take on what it means for the trajectory of the car industry.
Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.
🛻 What’s Next For GM:
“Eyes-off” highway driving is coming to Super Cruise in 2028. That means you’ll be able to take your hands off the wheel and not even have to watch the road. (Super Cruise currently allows you to drive hands-free only.)
This is a huge step toward fully autonomous cars, and it’s enabled by LIDAR (laser-based radar).
LIDAR has been used on Waymo’s driverless taxis and the like for years, but it’s still quite nascent on passenger cars. This debuts on the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ. (Read my deep dive at InsideEVs.)
Also coming in 2028: a new Nvidia computer system and electrical architecture for all of GM’s cars—EVs and gas ones alike. Fewer parts and wiring overall, a unified software stack for everything from subcompacts to electric luxury SUVs, and faster over-the-air updates.
Energy storage: Every GM EV can act as a home backup generator. Soon, the equipment to do that will be leased out to homeowners, presumably at lower prices than an outright purchase. Even non-GM owners can get a home battery storage unit.
Google’s Gemini AI is coming next year as an in-car AI assistant that’s more conversational than current voice controls.
Robots: No, it’s not a full-blown Tesla Optimus play. But GM says that its engineers are building advanced robots that incorporate a century of carmaking expertise with AI to improve future manufacturing.
So what does it all mean?
📊 More Context
GM, like other automakers, is slowing its EV rollout now that the tax credit and fuel-economy penalties have disappeared.
But while some rivals seem almost eager to pause electrification, GM insists it still sees EVs as a long-term pillar of the American auto industry.
GM didn’t have much new to announce here, but it did showcase one of its most important initiatives: lithium manganese-rich (LMR) batteries. In many ways, they could be the “engine” of GM’s future.
Those can be made much more cheaply and with less dependence on China’s supply chain than other batteries—crucial for a variety of future products, like more affordable electric trucks.
“That’s game-changing,” Anderson told me later about those batteries.
🚨 A Future With Cars, But Not Drivers
But the biggest announcements were around autonomy. If GM can pull this off, it’ll be the biggest deployment of the highest level of autonomous driving America has seen yet—and from very mainstream brands like Chevy and Cadillac.
CEO Mary Barra said she expects eyes-off Super Cruise to spread to the rest of the GM lineup very quickly.
Right now, only Mercedes-Benz offers true eyes-off driving, and only in two U.S. states—and under very limited conditions.
Many automakers are chasing eyes-off. Volvo has LIDAR on its new EX90 SUV, but it’s not actively driving this level of autonomy. Rivian wants eyes-off driving eventually, too. And Tesla has long-promised “unsupervised” Full Self-Driving, but that has yet to materialize.
GM officials didn’t mention Tesla, but they were openly critical of its vaunted camera-only approach to autonomy; LIDAR is superior for safety, they said.
❓ But I Have A Lot Of Questions, Too
GM isn’t saying what this LIDAR package will cost, or if it’ll be standard equipment on 2028’s Escalade IQ, or what eyes-off Super Cruise might cost as a subscription.
But the biggest questions are around regulations.
Currently, there are no rules that would allow eyes-off driving nationally. America instead has a patchwork of state regulations around autonomy.
Almost everyone in the industry agrees this must change soon. GM is betting it will by 2028—and Trump’s Transportation Department appears to be pushing that way too.
For now, "Certain states are open, certain states are not," Anderson said. "Right now, we'll take it as we go."
🧠 My Take:
As I’ve written on Route Zero before, Super Cruise has been a big win for GM, both technologically and financially. Drivers who try it keep subscribing.
Deploying LIDAR at scale in America would be huge. It’s the stuff China’s advanced automakers are doing more and more, except right now, not in three years.
The regulatory hurdle is the big question here. (It’s about to be a great time to be a GM lobbyist, probably.)
A lot of what GM announced, frankly, sounds like the Tesla playbook: autonomous cars, energy storage, robotics, AI, and so on. Or the Chinese automakers. Many, like Xpeng, are big on those things too, especially robots.
Broadly, and much to their frustration, automakers aren’t valued like tech companies, with the lone exception of Tesla.
Wall Street still sees them as high-capital, low-margin dinosaurs. GM has wanted that to change for years. These moves may help.
And this is more evidence of what I call the convergence taking place right now: between cars, batteries and robotics.
Anderson said as much: “The vehicle is the most productive robot you will probably ever have, because most robots can't move you places at 75 mph,” he told me. “Most robots can't go and pick things up for you across town.”
But is this what customers want, at a time when they’re mostly demanding cheaper cars? We’ll soon see.
📰 More Stories That Matter
GM is making big tech strides, but it’s still anti-Apple CarPlay—and will soon kill it on all its future gas cars as well as EVs. [The Verge]
Bummer: GM’s electric BrightDrop van is dead. The commercial EV van market has developed much more slowly than expected. [Detroit Free Press]
Rivian’s e-bike and scooter brand Also finally launched this week. Using EV-style technology, it aims to reinvent the personal mobility business, and it’s promising so far. My colleague Tim Levin took one for a spin. [InsideEVs]
Meanwhile, Rivian undergoes its third layoff of the year, cutting another 600 workers as it faces an EV downturn and seeks to preserve cash before the more affordable R2 arrives in 2026. [Wall Street Journal]
📡 On My Radar
Uber is offering drivers up to $4,000 to dump their gas cars and go electric. It hopes to be all-EV in a few years. How many drivers will go for it? [The Verge]
Amid Rivian’s layoffs, CEO RJ Scaringe will now lead marketing and creative, TechCrunch’s Sean O’Kane reports. The company faces a hard stretch until the R2 arrives—and it needs that launch to succeed. [TechCrunch]
🔌 Charging News
Once again, the U.S. is still adding new EV chargers at a breakneck pace. Moving the fastest: Tesla, and it’s not even close. [InsideEVs]
Automaker-backed charging venture Ionna had a big week. It added Rivian to its plug-and-charge network and announced more charging sites at Casey’s, the Midwestern convenience store chain. [Ionna]
Volvo launches a free home charging initiative, starting in Sweden. [EV Report]
Speaking of Volvo: its CEO thinks wireless EV charging, like Porsche is about to offer, is just a fad. [Newsweek]
About 100 new fast public EV charging ports are coming to Colorado, thanks to NEVI funding. [CleanTechnica]
Maryland just released more than $5 million in grant funding for EV charging stations. [Electrive]
Wanna power your home with your Kia EV9? You can get big incentives: up to $8,800 in California and $10,800 in Connecticut. [Electrek]
🔋 Battery Industry News
“This unlocks premium long-distance range at an affordable cost.” Inside the lab where GM is cooking up those China-beating batteries: [The Verge]
They had better get moving. Chinese automaker Chery claims to have developed 800-mile batteries, more than double the average driving range of today's EVs. [InsideEVs]
Meanwhile, the Energy Department this week killed another $700 million in battery factory funding. [Heatmap News]
Chinese EV battery firm Gotion failed to launch a factory in Michigan. Now, Michigan wants its money back. [AP]
Emerging battery recycling giant Redwood Materials raised $350 million in a Series E financing round that values the company at more than $6 billion. [Bloomberg]
🤖 Autonomy News
Robotic delivery and autonomous taxi service Avride just secured up to $375 million, backed by Uber Technologies and Nebius Group. Avride wants to boost its driverless fleet to as many as 500 cars. [Bloomberg]
The billionaire founder of LIDAR company Luminar is out amid an “ethics inquiry.” Now, he wants to buy it back. [TechCruch]
Tesla wants to launch its autonomous vehicles in Arizona by the end of this year. [Phoenix Business Journal]
China’s Neolix Technologies Co. is close to raising $500 million ahead of a potential IPO. [Bloomberg]
If 5G connectivity is key to autonomous vehicles, how do carmakers manage patchy service? The answer is satellites. [Automotive News]
🧠 AI News
AI and EVs are changing training paths for next-gen autoworkers. [Detroit Free Press]
“We’re not about to replace Nvidia, to be clear.” More on Tesla’s AI chip strategy after a high-profile departure earlier this year. [CNBC]
Uber’s new "digital tasks" program is engaging drivers to train AI in their off time. [Axios]
Is AI keeping us out of a recession? [Yahoo Finance]
📤 Spread the Charge
If this newsletter helped you make sense of what matters in e-mobility, forward it to a friend or coworker. And tell them to subscribe here.
❓ How’s My Driving?
This is a work in progress, so all feedback is welcome. Send me your thoughts anytime.
💡 Did You Know?
The first industrial robot was actually put to use in a GM plant. The Unimate robotic arm was deployed in 1961 at a Fisher Body plant in New Jersey. It was tasked with unloading the heavy finished castings from a die-cast press. The robot later appeared on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, opening a can of beer and knocking a golf ball into a cup.
Until next time,
—Patrick George