Hitting the Accelerator

Early last year, just before COVID turned everything upside down, we revealed the Cruise Origin.

Since then, while many of us have been working from home, hundreds of engineers from General Motors, Honda and Cruise haven’t skipped a beat, completing their development work, getting supply chains ready, and ordering and installing tooling. Against all odds, they’ve kept the Origin program on time, and on track for production at GM’s Factory ZERO assembly plant. 

Step one. Check. 

Step two? Paying for all these Origins as they roll off the assembly line.

Which is why today we’re announcing that GM Financial, the automotive financing arm of GM, is working with Cruise and providing a $5 billion line of credit so we can efficiently finance the expansion of our fleet as we scale up over the next few years. This bumps up Cruise’s total war chest to over $10 billion as we enter commercialization. 

$10 billion. It’s a big number. However, when you think about what we’re building — safer, cleaner, and more accessible transportation for the world — you quickly realize it’s also a necessary number.

This is an incredibly exciting time for Cruise. Over the last couple weeks, I’ve spent time in GM’s Pre-Production Operations center where the team has started building the first batch of nearly a hundred pre-production Origins. These will undergo an intensive testing and validation process this summer. Seeing them up close and in person is absolutely thrilling. I’ve also just visited GM’s 4+ million sq ft Factory ZERO plant where the machinery is being installed to build the Origin by the tens of thousands. 

Personally, the citizen in me is extremely optimistic about the positive impact we’re going to make on the world. The kid in me just thinks the Origins are insanely cool. And the business geek in me gets to marvel at cutting edge technology meeting major manufacturing scale, brought together by an amazing team, powerful partners and extensive resources.  

While I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished to date, I’m very much humbled by the fact that we’re really just approaching the starting line of what will be the transportation transformation of the century. So we need to celebrate on the run. And get back to work.