GM Hires Aurora Co-Founder Sterling Anderson
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General Motors Co. has hired Sterling Anderson, the former director of Tesla’s Autopilot program and a co-founder of autonomous vehicle startup Aurora Innovation Inc., as the company’s chief product officer overseeing all vehicle development.
GM said Anderson will oversee development for gasoline and electric vehicles, including hardware, software and services, reporting to company President Mark Reuss. Anderson was most recently chief product officer at Aurora. The company announced his departure in a regulatory filing last week. Anderson left Aurora shortly after the company launched its fully self-driving heavy-duty trucks on public roads in Texas.
With Anderson, GM CEO Mary Barra is building out a management team with veterans from Tesla and other transportation technology startups in a move to continually modernize the 120-year-old automaker. Anderson, 41, will be joining two other former Tesla executives in senior positions at the company.
Anderson’s appointment is a bold stroke by Barra, who held the job he is taking for two years before she took over as CEO in 2014. The job would give him the experience running a large organization that Barra, 63, needs as she grooms the next generation of leadership for the automaker. The hire is the first outsider to run product development since the company hired Bob Lutz, who had retired from the former Chrysler to run the new-car works in 2001.
“Sterling joins GM at a critical time as our industry continues to reinvent itself,” Barra said in a statement. “He brings decades of leadership in automotive engineering, tech startups, and software innovation. Sterling will help accelerate the pace of progress.”
GM is pushing ahead with electric vehicles even as sales in the overall market have slowed and threats from the Trump administration to cut tax incentives for plug-in models loom. GM has a dozen EVs on the market, ranging in size from the compact Chevrolet Equinox small SUV up to the large pickup trucks and the Cadillac Escalade IQ. The company also plans to launch a new Chevy Bolt compact EV later this year.
The automaker shut down its robotaxi unit Cruise late last year and is instead shifting its resources to develop autonomous vehicles that the company will sell to consumers and improve its SuperCruise driver assistance features. Anderson led Tesla driver assist efforts in 2015 and 2016.
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GM has been gaining share in the U.S. electric vehicle market and, with its continued investment, stands with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. as the two major automakers challenging Tesla’s electric vehicle dominance in the U.S. market.
Barra has shown a willingness to hire from outside the traditional auto industry, looking for expertise from Silicon Valley’s tech companies. During his tenure at Tesla, Anderson worked with Kurt Kelty, who now runs GM’s battery development operations, and Jon McNeill, who serves on GM’s board of directors. Barra also hired former Tesla executive JP Clausen, who resigned after just one year with the Detroit-based automaker.
With a broad lineup of electric models for sale, GM is trying to reduce the cost of its EVs and make them more affordable and profitable. Kelty is central to that effort and has been re-engineering the company’s battery strategy.
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Anderson’s experience would help with autonomy, electric vehicles and the software that now runs more core features in today’s cars. He acknowledged his new job in a LinkedIn post.
“There’s more to GM than meets the eye: the institution is not just building vehicles; it’s shaping how people live and connect,” Anderson wrote. “The world is changing quickly, and with its proud legacy, powerful infrastructure, and bold vision, GM is uniquely positioned to lead that change.”
Before working on Autopilot, Anderson led the development and launch of Tesla’s Model X. He was also a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on development of its Intelligent Co-Pilot autonomous vehicle system.
