YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Barra

lines on the record: 73
first: 2025-10-22
most recent: 2025-10-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I have one very, very small feature request, but it's very important to me The buttons that control the seat memory on the door in my Cadillac Vistic do not also switch the user profiles on the infotainment system. So when I get in the car, I need to push the button to move my seat to my seat memory and switch the profile from my wife's profile to my profile. And I have no idea why I have to do both. I just want to be able to push the seat memory button and have that switch the profile as well. Can you fix that for me?”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look at every company that's had a major incident that could be attributed to that company, how to go for them afterwards. They might have gotten there quicker, but it didn't go well once the public lost trust. We have earned that. We will retain it and we're going to build on it. And so the work that we're doing in Butonomy, be it robotics, be it a number of other areas, I think this caricature of a traditional OEM doesn't fit. This caricature of bubble-wrapped vehicles that aren't innovating, it just doesn't work, right? The number of bets that we're making that Mary's made. I mean, Mary years ago when I was in the autonomy space, I watched her make the investment in cruise. I watched her kind of lead that to a place where Cruz was the first to deploy commercially in a densely urban setting. I think the”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Nilay, if. The stereotypical view that I think has been expressed of a traditional automaker super focused on safety might suggest we are sitting still and just putting out vehicles with great airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones, right? Like, and we're good with that. I think the reality is far different for GM. Our customers have driven over 700 million hands-free miles with supercruise without a single accident attributed to the technology. I led autopilot. You can't say that for autop I think this is a long term play. We build trust with customers by delivering safe products. Look at in the autonomy space,”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I perceive it as serving the customer. And so we'll look at decisions we're making, but also we have a very, we all have a regulator with NHTSA, but we look at that and we are very forthright and transparent because we want them to know what we're working on, what we're looking at. And again, there are regulator, but I think having that so they understand how we look at safety for the long term is going to pay dividends. And I think it's going to pay dividends for the consumer. I don't think it holds us back. I think it keeps us focused on what's really important. Time will tell, but again, I'm proud of our safety record and I'm proud of what our customers say. And you see it from a different perspective. So please.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From a manufacturer perspective or from a car company perspective for our consumers. So I think safety is not just a kind of a cultural perspective. It is a commitment to our customer. Now as we look and we go forward, how do we deliver that safety and how do we do it more efficiently? We're always looking for ways that we can be better. But I think it's a very important of the promise. And if you read half of the letters that I get from our consumers and you look and see what they walked away from, I think it would be something that motivates you every day to continue to deliver on that promise.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I would say I've been at this company for over 40 years and it's existed for well over 100. And I would say safety is an overriding priority. Safety of our workforce, you know, not just for injury, but also preventative from an ergonomic perspective. We are committed and I'm very proud that we have an industry leading record. And it translates into safety of our vehicles. And I probably get three or four letters a week from someone sending me a picture of them and they'll send me a picture of the vehicle that is somewhat unrecognizable. And I can tell you many of them, they walked away with just a scratch. I've had letters sent to me from people in a hospital bed thanking me and saying, I will be buying a general motors vehicle for the rest of my life because I know what you do and design into safety. And so, and we have the highest loyalty scores.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Described a lot of things that a lot of other companies are doing. Obviously, Tesla does a lot of these same things. They've pushed really far ahead with what they refer to as full self-driving. They're demoing. Many ways assisted GM's credit. I think you should. I hope more car companies are worried about safety. But in many ways, it has contributed to the perception that Tesla is vastly ahead. Do you think about that balance? Because if I had to just identify the cultural difference in Sterling, I'm curious, since you've worked at both places, if I had to just identify the cultural difference, that would be it.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Commitments or announcements today, but Know we do. We recognize as Sterling said the amount of information that we have and the very complex work that is done today in our factories and what we can do to better support our team members. So I think there's a whole new world that... Was in front of us an opportunity for us as we move forward.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would say we think of a lot of things. I mean, one of the things that General Motors were constantly innovating, as I mentioned, we were just in design and looking at what the future holds of what we can bring forward. I think we continue to imagine what the applications can be.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Least in my head, it is a small jump from we have an AI enabled robot that can bring a factory worker bolts to I have a robot in my house that can bring me a beer, right? Like the kind of manipulation you're describing actually has a pretty massive general purpose application. Are you thinking that far ahead?”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The line to hand it to a kind of worker, hold it in place for that worker to shoot the bolt. There's tremendous opportunity for us to build that not only for our own use, it improves the safety, the efficiency, the throughput of our own business. To expand that to our supply base to increase our competitive moat, and then ultimately to productize it and commercialize it. Others in kind of industrial automotion.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Enormous Of database From which to develop Really compet Phys Embody AI systems. Can be powerful enablers. Of our own production and the safety of our employees. So today, I think 30,000 robots operating alongside on the order of 97,000 production associates in 11 facilities. You think of automotive robots and you're probably thinking of giant Arms that sit in cages with e stops on the outside that can't operate in and around humans because they're just simply not designed for it. Developing autonomous mobile robots that move materials through our factories Started deploying those. We're developing cobots or collaborative robotic systems. Operate alongside associates that are currently in our factories and are scaling up Can, for instance, manipulate and bring apart”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Known in detail. It's sitting in CAD, we know the mass We know the material Know the response to manipulation. We know the flows of that material through a production system. We know what happens at each step of the production system, every single step. Is meticulously outlined in work instruction.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I would say start when we look at it from that perspective and we already look at what we're doing from a GM Energy perspective for the home, I think there's a lot of potential as we move forward. And Sterling, what would you like to add?”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Already have quite an extensive offering from a GM Energy perspective and then the ability that your vehicle can actually power your home and power outages. So that's something we're continuing to work to make that vehicle work even harder for the owner. Beyond when we talk about robotics, there's a lot that's a broad term, and I'm sitting here speaking to someone who has his PhD in robotics, so I probably should turn it over to him. But when we look at what we're doing on the factory floor with a cobot that is able to take over and do things that create safety issues for our team members or create ergonomics issues or get rid of what non-value added activities that makes everyone more efficient. But that learning and what we're doing, I think, is something that we can look at for broader application.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you think about the long term future, you're also announcing a robotics division, you're announcing batteries in the home, you're announcing eyes-free driving, what level three autonomy in the 28 Escalade. That's a big shape of how we will interact with cars, right? You're going to get to the house. Your car will be part of your energy system in your house. You'll have robotics that will let you take the technologies you're building for autonomy and AI in the car and put them in your house. That's a pretty tight integration of how people feel about their cars today and how people feel about the things in their home. And somewhere in there is what is the next generation of devices, right? This is like the big question that's animating the tech industry around me. How are we going to graduate from our phones? You've obviously made a big bet, right? We're going to graduate from our phones in a car. And the car is going to be a big part of that platform. But then you've got to go in the house and there's going to be a GM robot. There's going to be a GM power supply. How are you?”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, but Yeah, I'm very curious. I mean, I obviously want the upgrade in my car as well. This is my other question Why pick Gemini when you evaluate all the Universal Partners obviously ChatGPT, OpenAI, huge consumer market share, Google obviously is very capable. You already have the partnership was it as simple as we already have the partnership or did you do the full evaluation? I think the team, I know”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I personally don't know the exact rollout plan. So I say, let me get email me and we can talk to you about that of what I don't know what our rollout is and I don't know what we've released yet. This isn't one of those situations. So I don't know if you know, but I know we haven't made it public yet. So we'll get back to you.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we have a safety group within the company that really looks at that and is looking at all those decisions are made because they can think through second order, third order, you know, down the road of really thinking through to make sure that we've interrogated it to make sure we're making good decisions and we're not going to put the driver or the passengers into a situation that no one wants to be in.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's right. 100%. This is something that we are very keen on, right? Whether it's the development of our self-driving system, we are acutely familiar with and aware of the challenges that arise when you have a kind of monolithic end-to-end system about which you can't make any strong guarantees to other controls across the car that are safety relevant. So as I said, we are, I mean, that's probably much longer conversation than we have time for here, but this becomes architecturally relevant in the design of our self-driving system. It's architecturally relevant in the design of the rest of our AI and how it interfaces with vehicle controls. And we are taking that very carefully.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the only thing I would add at General Rogers, we always prioritize safety. You know, we were the first to have a driver assistance technology out with supercruise, but we very much prioritized the safety of that and enabled different features as we were, we saw it demonstrate that it could meet the safety standards that we have. I think that's what Sterling's talking about now is as we do this, we won't just go wide open, but we'll make sure that the integrity of the safety systems are there.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just the data that you have available via a variety of other mechanisms, but it will be specifically tailored, customized, and learned from the vehicle itself, its functions. It will have specific access to specific functions. It will have other controls in place that a generic LLM doesn't have. So I think the value of these large models oftentimes can be realized in much greater effect through tailoring and fine-tuning for specific application areas. And that's what we're going into post the Gemini conversational AI work.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll say though, step one what you're referencing in the Gemini based conversational AI work that we're going to release next year, that's really about kind of vocal interaction, voice-based interaction with your car. It's about asking about your destination. It's about asking about a number of other things where it can give you kind of contextual responses. I think you're hitting at the heart of But many elements of the car if you're going to directly control them are safety critical and how can you deal with the kind of accuracy that you get out of an untailored LLM if you're giving direct access to those things? The short answer is we're not. We are developing in addition to the contextual AI that comes out next year a more powerful specifically tailored AI that will learn from not just your preferences and”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are a number of things that we're going to infer directly on the vehicle, and we've got quite a bit of, as I mentioned, the computational power is there for us to do a lot of on-vehicle inference.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through controller back to actuator, we're talking sub one millisecond, right? You're talking a thousand hertz. That's a 10x improvement over previous electrical architectures. This is a massive, massive opportunity, not only for the dynamics, which I found General Motors is extraordinarily good at, but for the software that we can deploy on this. Because now we've got a centralized architecture. Now we've got a central compute on which we can run a variety of applications to which we can deploy updates of those applications at a much higher pace than what we do today. And so that flexibility that comes via abstraction of hardware and software with this new electric architecture is really going to be a powerful enabler for us going forward and something that I'm excited about. So going forward, your questions about why can I get some things on one car and not another, you're going to have far fewer of those because you're going to have a lot more kind of commonality.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It will arrive first on the 28th. That's right. That's the computer. That's right. What it does is from a networking perspective, it moves to Ethernet-based networking, which allows us to move to submillisecond response times. Take magnetic suspension systems or dampers as your example from accelerometer.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we are. So we're thinking about AI across the business, right? Not just in kind of what it does to the product experience, but what it does to our development of the product. What it does to kind of what we can do to bring to bear the massive data that this company has in our production systems, in our CAD and development systems to leverage in development of AI for production for the product. As it relates to the product, though, what I'll say is this is one of the really important enablers of speed in a company with a portfolio this broad is development of a common platform or undergirding infrastructure on which we can deploy, including over-the-air software updates. As Mary mentioned, There are some legacy platforms that will kind of work their way out of the portfolio, but one of the things we're working on.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you look at it, a lot of it depends is when do you do an update to that vehicle? When you look at the fact that we have over 40 models that across our portfolio, you don't just do this and they all update. So I think you'll see as we move forward with each new vehicle and major new vehicle launch, I think you're going to see us consistent on that. We made a decision to prioritize our EV vehicles during this timeframe. And as we go forward, we'll continue across the portfolio.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think overarching, we want to give the consumer a great experience in the car that's not clunky, that allows them to getting to this point of safety that one of your viewers talked about, that you can be the least distracted and pull even more information from the vehicle to improve the way your whole experience overall. So, you know, we're at the, I'd say, the early phase of making that shift and now continuing to add more to it, continuing to make it more intuitive. How do we make access to more apps and more things you want to leverage? So we're excited about the future that we have coming for what's going to be available in the system we put into the vehicle.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meaningful way. And that kind of gets to Mary's point, right? Don't expect that we won't have a growing list. I mean, today we use Google Automotive Services in these cars. That's got access to the Play Store. Quite a few apps available through that that will only grow in time, as will availability of apps from other places.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, like, if you cop your My point being, if you've got your phone in your laptop or you've got your phone in your car, if you're sitting next to your laptop, you don't typically open your, pick up your phone to answer an email. You'll answer on your laptop. If you're sitting in your car, you wouldn't pick up your phone to use a map application if it's sitting there on a bigger screen in front of you in the car, right? And if you have a convenient HMI by which to.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We don't have anything to share on that right now. But what I will say is there are, so your first comment really struck at the HMI, right? The ease of use, and do you have to log into each of these different services and applications in your car? Because if you do, you get some breakage. Some people just will never do that, right? It's a pain. We're looking at that as well, right? What can we do about federated IDs? What can we do to eliminate that friction of you engaging with your car? I'm not sure I quite follow the whole like it's illegal to use your phone when you're driving and not when you're on your laptop. I think that cuts against your argument a little bit because if you're sitting with your laptop and your phone”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But Nili, I would say we have a good relationship with Apple. I made it the most senior level with both Apple, with Google, with all of the tech companies. We're bringing the wallet. We will be announcing that shortly, that we'll have that and have the ability to do some of the vehicle functions through that. So we're having continual conversations with Apple, and I would say we're talking about the opportunity and looking for win-wins. We also have a very good relationship with Google, and we don't enable Android Auto either. So I would say you're talking about a moment in time versus where the industry is heading from Adobe Atmos and the relationship that we have with Apple. So I wouldn't make some of the broad-based assumptions you're making.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Library of Content. Then there Consumers being unable to affect what feels like business dealings at a much higher level. In the example I'll give you there is, yes, my car has Dolby Atmos in it. The number one provider of Atmos tracks in this industry is Apple Music, and Apple Music will not have an app on your phone because I'm confident that Apple wants you to have CarPlay and that is a business dealing that consumer demand cannot affect. And that's kind of the shape of the puzzle, right?”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“App on their laptops because it's not illegal to also use your phone while you're using your laptop and it is very illegal to use your phone while you're driving your car. So this is the first difference that most of our readers would point to this thing where I need to see my phone. I need access to all of the applications and data on my phone without relogging in or having multiple user profiles, it's fine with my laptop. It's fine with my iPad. It's not fine in the car because the one specific one that's sticks in my brain about the library of applications is I'm actually not a huge carplay fan and I complained about it on our other show and I got this long note from a reader and he said look I use between six and eight audio applications on my three hour commute and one of them is just this like very I believe it was very niche like Bible app and he's like they're never going to support this on these other platforms it's on my phone and it has a carplay extension and so that's one thing right I just want”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only just laptop speakers, not only a laptop screen, but something better and that can move you and that can integrate with charging infrastructure, with supercruise availability on your maps, all of these other things, you're in a much more immersive environment that can do so many more things. Why would you use the equivalent of a phone mirroring application on a laptop in your car? And so for us, it's a, look,”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Removal of the disk drive, nobody liked it, everybody on the forums and Facebook was complaining about it, but it was really a look, guys, flash storage really is the future. Get on board, you'll see that. That's kind of what we're saying here. That's exactly what we're saying. In fact, in the analog that I use for folks is, look, if you're talking to me about CarPlay, it's very likely you've certainly got an iPhone, you've probably got a MacBook. You have the opportunity to use phone projection on your MacBook, right? A phone mirroring application. How many of you are accessing online services like email, social media, and otherwise through the phone projection app in your laptop? Almost none of them do. Why? Because you've got a much larger screen on your laptop. You've got a much more convenient HMI via the keyboard. You've got better speakers. Now take that same analog to the car and ask the same question. Is it in a car that has not only”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree with that. Nely, one thing that I'd say here is what we're talking about is the inevitable performance degradation when jumping between S-curves. And what I'll describe as those S-curves is, you know, the first one was for some time, I think you and others got attached to phone projection applications, largely because the in-vehicle HMI was pretty bad, your opportunity for doing some of the things was better when you were using that. We've now gotten to a point where, I mean, you're driving a Vistic, I understand. I mean, you've got Dolby surround audio. You've got giant screens. You've got giant displays. The analog I would use here is we're on this new S curve. There is inevitably a jump that has to happen for you to get over to it. That's uncomfortable for many, right? But frankly, it's a very jobsian kind of approach to things, right?”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it's really a question of timing as we look at that because really, and I want to make sure that we get Sterling's input on this as well, but as we looked at it and as we made that decision, we were getting a lot of feedback from customers that it was very clunky moving back. It wasn't seamless. And frankly, in some cases could be distracting to move back and forth between if you were doing something that you could do on a phone projection type of system versus if you needed to do something in the vehicle. And we also know that's only going to increase when you look at some of the things we're going to talk about of how we can just make your life better and assist you as we move forward. And I think we're at the very, very early stages of services we can have on a vehicle to improve the overall customer experience and make the journey smoother. And so we looked at that and we decided that we needed to have a great system in the vehicle.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The big announcement that I'm really curious about is Gemini powered assistant in the car that's coming obviously in 2026. That's, I would say, an expansion of the idea that GM should have a software platform in its cars, right? We're running Android, automotive in the cars. There's an app platform. There's a data platform. There's Google Assistant in my car. My daughter was asking it to play Taylor Swift. That's basically all we use, that platform for today because she won't let us do anything else. But it works. It's there. The big decision there, and I know you know this question is coming, is that you bet against putting smartphone projection in your EVs. There's an Apple CarPlayer Android Auto in the EVs, but the gas car still have it. How did you make that decision?”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just one example, but it's really getting the team together and understanding where is the consumer going, where is technology going, and then what is the roadmap we're going to put forward. I would also tell you, though, it used to be, I would say five, seven years ago, we would put the portfolio together and usually it was an annual event. I would say it's a more frequent event now as we continue to take new learnings and make adjustments because the minute you have new information, you just don't want momentum to put a program forward. You want to pivot and make the change to make sure you're going to be relevant going forward. But I would say my decision making is largely in based like, let's look at it as a team, different experiences, different skills, and I think together we get to better solutions and a better strategy.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, a lot of the decisions we make are complex. And so one of the things I like to leverage is the senior leadership team. nine people that are core to the company that lead all the functions. Sterling is on that team as our chief product officer, along with a few others. And we look at trends both inside and outside our industry. We look at what's happening with technology. We're very focused on where the consumer is. Of course, we benchmark where the competition is. But then we also look and try to say where is the consumer going? And I think there's been many times we have found white space in even vehicle segments. When we first put the Buick Encore out, no one thought they were like, you know, no one's going to buy it. That segment now has grown for us to four vehicles and is profitable and growing. And we can't build enough of those vehicles.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As we want to deploy capital, where do we want to do that? And do we really want to put all that capital into all the vehicles for rideshare when our business today isn't rideshare 1.0? It's not taxis. It's not rental cars. And so we made a strategic decision to focus that talent and to have them work closely with engineer and technical talent within General Motors to be able to focus and be in a leading position from personal autonomy. And that's what we're focused on now. And, you know, Sterling coming in, he's got great experience.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All of that. What I could say about cruise is there's a tremendous amount of Chris talent that's still here. As we looked at what it was going to take, I mean, I think everyone, I remember back in 2016, you know, I made the prediction we would have an autonomous vehicle by 19. It really was a couple years later that we had that. I think you've seen the whole industry, whether you're a tech company or an OEM, realize it's a pretty significant challenge. I think we're closer today. But as we made that change and as we continue to see progress, we looked at and said,”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our goal was let's get the right people in the right functions. And so we've brought in from a software perspective, we've brought in a tremendous amount of talent from Silicon Valley, big and small companies, MAG7, et cetera. When we started to look at it and we said, okay, from a battery perspective, bringing in someone with Kurt Kelty who's worked his whole career in batteries. And then he came and went, oh my gosh, you've got the capability to do not only core R&D, so when you have a promising startup, you can take that into one of our R&D centers and really see if it's going to scale and its manufacturable to actually being able to work on process improvements because you need all of that to get the cost out of the battery to get EVs profitable. And then there's a lot of learnings that flows back in from a software perspective. It doesn't matter what the propulsion system is. And so our...”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around software defined vehicles, but there's a lot of work to come. But yeah, I guess the core story is I think we leverage our scale and we leverage our people best when we do this through a streamlined process that's part of the company.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Process that we have for our global product development across the company. So my expectation is when this hits as it hits, as LMR hits, as our architectures hit, as our manufacturing improvements hit, as some of our robotics work that we can talk about hits, what you'll see is those immediately kick in, and what's done initially in one model in one plant, in one brand rapidly scales across a massive portfolio of vehicles. So I think that the leverage that we realize by doing this much, much higher than what we could do if it were an isolated effort, nothing against isolated efforts, that's sometimes the thing that you do, you have to do to really move the needle on something. But I'm really impressed by what the company's been doing since well before I joined, but we're certainly moving that forward.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The battery chemistry and some of the battery innovations, I think you may be aware that we've been pioneering. We are today the largest manufacturer of cells in North America. This is larger than Tesla today. We have been pioneering work in lithium manganese rich or LMR battery chemistry that has something closer to the energy density of high nickel batteries that you're familiar with at closer to the cost of lithium-ion phosphate or LFP. So a lot of the, and those will come to market first in GM vehicles in some of our larger vehicles in 2028. So what we've done is oriented the company in some of this kind of the functional strength that Mary references in common design, common engineering to innovate on many of the foundational enablers of compelling battery electric platforms done through the streamlined kind of”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Since before. I only got here four months ago, so there's only so much that you can attribute at all to me at this point. But what I'll say is General Motorists has taken a much more steady approach to this development. Electric vehicles designed and developed and manufactured on electric vehicle architectures, which are not nearly as compromised. A focus on the cost basis for these vehicles, on what are the value added components that we can put in them and what are the things that just don't add that value that we can strip out and kind of refine, whether it's reduction in menial stuff like spot welds, right? So some of our next generation platforms, dramatic reduction in those, you'll never see those. You'll never hear about them. But they drive an enormous cost. I think at one point the estimate was $40,000 per spot weld if you advertise kind of all the costs of the robots and everything else across it.”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A couple of quick comments. I like Doug a lot. We work together and I worked with Alan Clark, who's been leading this conceptual work program for Ford, both great people. So nothing about that. What I will say is I've seen a fairly oscillatory behavior from some OEMs when it comes to EVs, right? In one moment, it'd say, well, forcing electric powertrain into an ice platform, and we'll end up with a fairly compromised product as a result that turns people off to certain segments, right? Electric battery electric trucks. There's some things that just weren't great about the way that that started in some of this space. And then I see a pendulum swing all the way to a, it's got to be skunk works project. It's going to be done fully independently from a clean sheet, and then we're going to somehow try to ingest it into the broader organization. That ingestion is where the risk lies. I think what I've seen that General Motors has been doing”
2025-10-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why GM will give you Gemini — but not CarPlay · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT