By Victor Swezey


Cruise named Marc Whitten as chief executive, effective July 16, as the company attempts to reboot its troubled self-driving car program.

The San Francisco-based self-driving vehicle company, which is owned by General Motors, said Tuesday that Whitten will take over from the two co-presidents who have been at the helm since former CEO Kyle Vogt resigned in November.

Whitten was a founding engineer at Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox Live, before holding leadership positions at Sonos, Amazon.com and Unity.

Cruise, which was acquired by GM in 2016, paused its self-driving program in October when California regulators declared its self-driving vehicles unsafe for the public and pulled its self-driving permit. The decision came after a San Francisco woman was trapped under a Cruise vehicle and severely injured.

The company earlier this month resumed supervised autonomous driving in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas.

Cruise also said that Nick Mulholland will take over as chief communications and marketing officer. Mulholland had previously led global communications at the electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian.


Write to Victor Swezey at victor.swezey@wsj.com 


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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-25-24 1726ET