Honda Invests $2.75 Billion in Cruise, GM’s Driverless Car Subsidiary
Summary
Honda’s investment in GM comes on the heels of SoftBank Vision Fund’s decision to pump $2.25 billion into Cruise in May.Because of GM’s longstanding relationship with Honda—they are partnering on the development of fuel cells for electric vehicles—Ammann said it would be able to move “very quickly” in ramping up production to meet that goal.“We’re moving as quickly as we can to get to the point where we can initially deploy the technology and then scale it,” Ammann told reporters during the media briefing.While Detroit might be a hub for the production of self-driving technologies, the News said, it likely wouldn’t be among the first American cities to host them, because it isn’t densely populated enough, and its snowy weather and poor transportation infrastructure make it an “unattractive place to launch a robotic vehicle business,” the newspaper said.The Detroit News report quoted Sam Abuelsamid, an auto industry analyst for Navigant Research , who said that aging cities like Detroit will have to create more complex smart-city systems that work to alleviate traffic and other factors that make it hard to get around.