General Motors turned to Sterling Anderson, a veteran of the self-driving car industry, overseeing the entire gas-powered and electric vehicle product line in a newly created job that touched almost every division of the US automaker. The new VP of Global Product and Chief Product Officer position covers the entire lifecycle of GM’s portfolio and includes hardware, software, services, and user experience.
Anderson, who will report to GM President Mark Reuss, will begin on June 2nd in a new position. He will be based at the Mountain View Tech Center in California.
Anderson made the headlines last week after announcing that he had resigned from Aurora, the self-driving car company he co-founded with two other pioneers in the AV sector. His resignation from the Aurora Commission came just a week after the company launched commercial autonomous truck services in Texas.
Anderson told TechCrunch that he had no anticipation of leaving Aurora, but the more conversations he had with GM leadership, including the chairman and CEO, “the more we appreciated the potential we could do.”
“The scope of what you do with GM is vast,” he said in a recent interview. “The ability to make a positive impact on the lives of millions of people, including magical experiences with vehicles that improve the safety and effectiveness of our roads.”
Anderson’s role covers Cranny in every corner of GM, pushing it to modernize and electrify its vehicle portfolio under Barra. He leads the Vehicle and Manufacturing Engineering, Battery, Software and Services Product Management Team. This means that Kurt Keltie, who is in charge of battery, propulsion and sustainability and is welcomed by Tesla, will report to Anderson.
Heads of automakers in global manufacturing and product engineering, software and services, vehicle product programs, safety and integration will also report to Anderson.
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“Our customers expect more from the vehicle than ever,” Reuss said in a statement. “There is an opportunity to evolve ways to build from scratch with an unwavering focus on software and hardware integration, a short development cycle and a seamless customer experience. Sterling brings decades of leadership in automotive engineering and transformative software innovation to his new role.
Anderson said that if the company had not recently met its major unmanned, self-driving truck service milestone, he would not have left Aurora, where he was the top product manager.
Anderson did not say what happened on his first to-do list at GM.
Anderson said there is “a rather long thing” that he is very interested in understanding better. However, GM shareholders, customers and employees should not expect extreme deviations from the company’s current path.
He said all areas of interest are in line with what Vision Barra is laying out, including providing customers with vehicle service and updates throughout their lifetime, including the need for a rapid iteration and a software-defined vehicle platform.
Anderson was the director of Tesla’s autopilot program and led Uber’s autonomy and awareness team when he co-founded Aurora in 2017 along with his former head of Google’s autonomous driving project. The trio’s pedigree quickly became a hot topic in Aurora, and they were Sequoia Capital, Amazon, and T. It helped attract well-known investors such as RowePrice Associates and won numerous partnerships.
Anderson holds a Masters and PhD in Robotics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.