General Motors’ self-driving car subsidiary Cruise said Tuesday that a video game industry veteran will become its new chief executive, eight months after its previous CEO resigned following a series of safety issues with their vehicles.
The appointment of Marc Whitten, most recently an executive at video game technology company Unity, comes after a tumultuous year for Cruise, who was ordered by California regulators in October to take his fleet of vehicles off the road after a series of traffic mishaps. . The worst incident occurred on October 2, when a pedestrian was dragged under a Cruise car on a San Francisco street.
Cruise has since laid off a quarter of his workforce and laid off nine executives.
Whitten, who will take over on July 16, was also a founding engineer at Xbox and general manager at Amazon. He will replace Mo Elshenawy, Cruise’s executive vice president of engineering, and Craig Glidden, GM’s general counsel, who were appointed by Cruise’s board of directors in November to lead the company following the resignation of Kyle Vogt, the previous CEO of Cruise. Cruise.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of this transformation,” Whitten said in a statement. “The Cruise team has created world-class technology and I look forward to working with them to help make this critical mission a reality.”
Since Vogt’s resignation, Cruise has been slow to restart operations, a far cry from its rapid expansion to 15 cities in 10 states a year ago. In May, Cruise executives told the New York Times that they were in no rush to travel again and that safety was Cruise’s “north star.”
GM acquired Cruise for $1.6 billion in 2016.
Cruise also hired Nick Mulholland, who worked for electric car maker Rivian, as its new director of communications and marketing. Elshenawy and Glidden will remain with the company and report to Mr. Whitten, the company said in a statement.
In a separate announcement, GM named Grant Dixton, who also comes from the video game industry, as its new executive vice president and chief legal and public policy officer. Dixton previously worked for Activision Blizzard in a senior leadership role.
