Not all heroes wear capes.
Many remain unknown.
Some thoughts on the unidentified GM engineer who forced the recall and stop-sale of every Cadillac Vistiq GM ever manufactured—and what the episode reveals about the automaker’s engineering, software validation, and supply chain.
Veteran automotive journalist Phoebe Wall Howard recently uncovered the disheartening story of an experienced Ford factory electrician who was fired after being falsely accused of stealing a $1.95 cookie from the plant commissary. Howard’s reporting burst my bubble about Ford’s leadership and reaffirmed my dim view of the UAW.
Howard’s prodigious reporting deserves amplification.
Ford’s Mexican-made Mustang Mach-E has muscled its way big time onto the roads of my west Los Angeles neighborhood. For years I rarely saw the vehicle, which first went on sale in December 2020, but these days they’re everywhere, in some pretty sweet color schemes, I must add. I saw…
It speaks volumes about the corporate media that to better understand antisemitism, growing wage disparity and labor unrest, and the declining state of the global automotive industry, I’m increasingly drawn to the World Socialist Web Site. The corporate media covers politics and business through the prism of its business owners—that’s…
You can’t make this stuff up! Ford CEO Jim Farley last October made headlines prognosticating that “artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.” He opined that “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind.” Given that Farley’s mistaken embrace of electric…
Uber’s business model—which I feared from the get-go would morph into a platform engineered to exploit drivers and riders—has always been personal to me. As I’ve noted several times on this blog, I drove a Toronto taxi when I was in college, and it was a very lucrative gig. In…
GM’s $40 million hiring of Sterling Anderson was the latest twist in an autonomy saga that began with Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick recognizing more than a decade ago that self-driving technology posed an existential threat to Uber’s future.
What followed connected Uber, Waymo, Aurora Innovation, Cruise, Tesla, GM, Kyle Vogt, Mary Barra, Dara Khosrowshahi, and some of the most influential autonomy visionaries in Silicon Valley.
The strangest part: many of the leaders who saw the autonomous driving future are no longer running the companies chasing it.
Why I hope Fidelity Investments is poised to clean Morgan Stanley’s clock.
GM CEO Mary Barra has previously raved that California is home to the best technologists. Here’s another reason she’s come to appreciate The Golden State.
Bob Lutz, an auto executive who held senior positions at the Detroit 3 and BMW, saw hybrids as the future.
He championed a vehicle acclaimed for its technology and beloved by its customers. GM abandoned it.
Toyota shared Lutz’s vision—and is cleaning up.