Cruise Origin driverless shuttle
Cruise
Cruise, a General Motors-owned autonomous vehicle subsidiary, has hired former Delta West Lines chief operating officer Gil West as its first COO, the company said Friday.
West retired at the end of September after 12 years at the Atlanta airline. He was responsible for Delta’s global operations, including 366 airports in 66 countries, 1,300 aircraft, 200 million customers a year and managed a budget of $ 16 billion. It began shortly before the 2008 Delta merger with Northwest and was named COO Delta in 2014.
“Gil’s track record of delivering an amazing customer experience, outstanding operating performance and seamless, large-scale safety is a perfect fit for Cruise as we begin the journey to commercialize our autopilot technology,” said Dan Ammann. , CEO of Cruise. .
West is the second Delta executive to join the carmaker’s operations in recent months. In October, GM nominated Paul Jacobson, Delta’s chief financial officer, as its new chief financial officer. Jacobson replaced Dhivya Suryadevara, who unexpectedly left GM for digital payment company Stripe on December 1st.
The sale of self-driving cars takes much longer than most thought, even a few years ago. Despite significant hype on Wall Street and companies, including Cruise, promising driverless driver fleets so far or around, Alphabet’s Waymo remains the only company to operate public-purpose vehicles in Arizona.
Cruise had planned to launch a robotaxi fleet in San Francisco in 2019, but those plans were delayed indefinitely for further testing.
“The cruise is leading the way in changing lives and improving the transportation status quo,” West said in a statement. “There will be no greater change in the transportation industry in my life than the transition to automatic driving … I have prepared my entire career for an opportunity like this.”