General Motors has turned to Sterling Anderson, a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry, to oversee its entire product line of gas-powered and electric vehicles, in a newly created job that will touch nearly every department at the U.S. automaker. The new VP of global product and chief product officer position will cover the entire lifecycle of GM’s portfolio and include hardware, software, services, and user experience.
Anderson, who will report to GM President Mark Reuss, starts in the new position June 2. He will based in the company’s Mountain View Tech Center in California.
Anderson made headlines last week after announcing he was resigning from Aurora, the autonomous vehicle company he co-founded with two other pioneers in the AV sector. His resignation, which includes from the Aurora board, came just a week after the company launched its commercial self-driving truck service in Texas.
Anderson told TechCrunch he had not anticipated leaving Aurora, but the more conversations he had with GM leadership, including Chair and CEO Mary Barra, the more he “appreciated the potential for what we could do there.”
“The scope of what we’ll do at GM is expansive,” he noted in a recent interview. “It’s an ability to affect millions of people’s lives for the better, including with just magical experiences in their vehicles that also improve the safety and efficacy of our roadways.”
Anderson’s role covers every nook and cranny at GM, which under Barra has pushed to modernize and electrify its portfolio of vehicles. He will lead vehicle and manufacturing engineering, battery, and software and services product management teams. That means Kurt Kelty, who heads battery, propulsion, and sustainability and also hailed from Tesla, will report to Anderson.
The automaker’s heads of 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 are expecting more from our vehicles than ever before,” Reuss said in a statement. “We have an opportunity to evolve the way we build from the ground up, with tighter integration between software and hardware, shorter development cycles, and an unwavering focus on a seamless customer experience. Sterling brings decades of leadership in automotive engineering and transformative software innovation to his new role and is the right leader to help GM continue leading now and into the future.”
Anderson said he would not have left Aurora, where he was chief product officer, if the company had not recently met its major driverless self-driving truck service milestone.
Anderson wouldn’t say what was on his initial to-do list at GM, noting he would focus on understanding the company, its culture, and products.
Anderson said there was “a pretty long list of things” that he is very interested in understanding better. However, GM shareholders, customers, and employees shouldn’t expect extreme departures from the company’s current path.
He noted that his areas of interest are all in line with the vision Barra has laid out, such as the need for rapid iteration and software-defined vehicle platforms that provide customers with services and updates for the vehicle through its lifetime.
Anderson was director of Tesla’s Autopilot program when he left to co-found Aurora in 2017 alongside CEO Chris Urmson, the former head of the Google self-driving project, and Drew Bagnell, who was leading Uber’s autonomy and perception team. The pedigree of the trio gave Aurora immediate buzz, helping it attract high-profile investors like Sequoia Capital, Amazon, and T. Rowe Price Associates, as well as a slew of partnerships.
Anderson holds master’s and PhD degrees in robotics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
