Mandi Damman is Shaping GM's EV and Self-Driving Future

Hands-off driving is one thing. Taking your eyes off the road entirely is something else. General Motors will allow you to do exactly that with the next generation of Super Cruise, its autonomous driving technology. Mandi Damman, Executive Chief Engineer at GM, oversees that effort along with the Chevy Bolt, the Cadillac Lyriq and Vistiq, and the company's entire battery electric truck lineup. She started as a co-op student working on body structures, a modest foundation that turned out to matter enormously for electric vehicles. The conversation gets into what actually changes in the next Super Cruise, how quickly the system will spread across GM's lineup, and what it feels like to ride in one of the development vehicles already on the road. Mandi is also strikingly candid about Chinese automakers. She spent time in China last December and came back with a clear picture of how they iterate so quickly. Join Craig Cole and co-host Sam Abuelsamid as they dive deep with Mandi to find out how close self-driving really is and what GM’s strategy is to keep pace with international rivals in this episode of GreenCars, The Podcast.

Chapters

0:00 - Introduction

4:04 - Meet Mandi Damman & Her Path at GM

8:38 - GM's EV Strategy & the Hybrid Question

10:49 - Next-Gen Super Cruise Goes Eyes-Off

16:57 - New Hardware, LiDAR & Rollout Plans

28:11 - Chinese Automakers, Speed & EV Structures

34:05 - Three for the Road

38:30 - Conclusions

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