cars news 10: GM Starts Testing Autonomous Vehicles in Michigan

General Motors is wasting no time. On the heels of new legislation allowing autonomous vehicles on public roads in Michigan, CEO Mary Barra announced today that GM will start testing its driverless cars in the northern state immediately. In fact, it starts today.

It’s a move made possible by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s signature on legislation last Friday in a bid to encourage innovation and ensure the state remains the epicenter of the auto industry in the face of increasing development in Silicon Valley.

“GM will immediately begin autonomous vehicle testing in Michigan,” Barra said during a press conference in Detroit. The state is perfect for testing the cars in cold weather and winter driving conditions, she also said.

GM began testing autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs in San Francisco in June and has expanded to include testing in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a fleet of about 40 vehicles. Doug Parks, vice president of autonomous technology, would not say how many more vehicles are being added to the test fleet.

GM has been testing a fleet of autonomous Chevy Volt hybrids as well on the campus of its sprawling technical center in Warren, Michigan, but now that it’s legal to do so, the Volts will expand their routes to public roads outside the campus, Barra said. In a couple months, testing will take place on the streets of metro Detroit. All vehicles will initially have a driver behind the wheel, but the cars will do all the driving on their own.

Ford has said it will have an autonomous vehicle for sale in 2021, and the automaker has been conducting cold weather testing at MCity, a fake city in Ann Arbor created for the industry to conduct safe testing in a controlled environment.

GM created an autonomous vehicle engineering team in January and invested $500 million in Lyft to develop a network of on-demand autonomous vehicles or robot-taxis. In March, GM bought Cruise Automation for its software engineering talent.

Barra also announced that the next generation of autonomous vehicles for testing will be built in early 2017 at the Orion plant that makes the Bolt EV and Sonic. To date, self-driving cars have been prototypes built in technical centers where they are outfitted with LIDAR, cameras, sensors, and other hardware.

GM delivered the first 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EVs this week to customers in California and some will make their way to Oregon, as well, before the year ends. Next year Bolt deliveries will go to New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts. Michigan will be later in the year. About 40 percent of Chevy dealers are certified to sell the car with a range of 238 miles and a starting price of less than $30,000 with a $7,500 federal tax rebate.

On other topics, Barra said she is looking forward to meeting President-Elect Donald Trump who has named her to his Strategic and Policy Forum. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also on the panel that will provide views on how government policy impacts economic development and job growth. “I’m pleased to have a seat at the table to talk about issues affecting the industry,” Barra told reporters.

Asked about controversial subjects such as Trump tweets, potential renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and a 35 percent tariff on goods coming from Mexico into the U.S., Barra said only that she respects any means he uses to constructively improve the industry.

She declined to get into a discussion about the impact of a price fixing investigation in China of GM operations there.

Earlier in the day, GM announced plans to invest $552 million at four plants.

$333.66 million is being spent at the New York Tonawanda Engine plant, most of it for future engine production which requires adding 67 jobs to the 857 existing positions.
$31.86 million goes to a components plant in Lockport, New York, which employs 320 people.
Another $5.9 million is earmarked for the components plant in Rochester, New York, which retains 20 positions.
$218 million will be spent at the Parma Metal Center in Ohio for new presses, dies, and subassemblies, affecting 140 jobs.