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GM's e-mobile magnate | page 1, 2, 3
We have this service called Onstar, which is a combination of a satellite-connect GPS system with a wireless connection. It's a service that we introduced about four years ago and it's really taken off; we have upwards of 100,000 subscribers today. It offers safety and security -- if you're in an accident our Onstar operator can detect whether you've had an airbag deployment. We call the vehicle to see if you are OK, and if there is no answer, or if you request support, we'll send an emergency vehicle right away. We've saved a lot of lives with this service. There's also a concierge service that will allow you to connect with our call center and make hotel or restaurant reservations; or you can get directions if you're lost, or order flowers if you forgot your anniversary. Now we've expanded this service, and what we are now showing is Virtual Advisor, which brings the Internet into the vehicle. You can create your own menu of information on the Internet and download that to your vehicle and, through voice activation, literally request stock quotes or sports scores or even e-mail while you drive. We also have text-to-voice capabilities [so the car can read information back to you]. In a sense it's the first step towards turning the vehicle into a browser on four wheels. How much time do people spend in their cars, and how much would they be using a technology like the Virtual Advisor? On a weekly basis, there are over a half a billion hours of eyeball time that customers spend in their vehicles. I used to live in the Bay Area and I'm well aware of the traffic patterns there; some days you might be stuck for a couple hours. If you can make your time in the vehicle more efficient by conducting activities and services over the Web, all of a sudden your life can be more efficient. That's really our goal. What about safety? Aren't you worried that people will be too distracted with their e-mail to notice other cars on the road? That's why we are using strictly voice activation; we don't want anybody playing with a keyboard in the front seat. Cell phones are bad enough. How many people will be using this, and how will it affect the cost of a car? We anticipate that we'll have over a million subscribers by next year, as we go into a factory-install mode. And we believe it will virtually become standard on most of our vehicles over the next three to five years. Probably other manufacturers will join us; soon you can consider the vehicle as being a device on the network, just as your PDA or your wireless is becoming. We're going to build the hardware cost of Onstar into the price of the vehicle, about $400. That gives you a free year of subscription service, and then you pay an annual or monthly subscription fee -- depending on the level of service, about $15 to 40 a month. You already have an electric car, the EV1, which has been around for a year and a half. How successful has it been? It's done pretty well; we haven't sold 50,000, it's more in the thousands, but the customers who have bought them -- and many of them are Californians -- love them, swear by them, are, in fact, our most zealous fan clubs. We've got movie stars like Danny DeVito who are really passionate about it ... But it's just a two-seater -- we learned quickly that people like the functionality of four doors and cargo space -- and people want more range on their vehicles [the EV1 gets only 100 miles on a charge]. The most important thing is that we've learned more about the technology and it's allowed us to get to the next generation of efficiency, and we're bringing that into the development of our hybrid vehicle. You've spent 26 years at GM, working in their Brazil headquarters, at a joint venture with Toyota in Fremont and most recently as head of GM's small-car operations. Why do you think you were you selected to be the head of this Net initiative? There was a fairly lengthy discussion in the company about whether we should bring in someone from the outside who was very familiar with the Internet, or whether we should use someone who is from the traditional business who can learn about the Internet and can essentially move GM to an e-commerce model. The conclusion of that debate was that we should try to use a car guy who's been in the business and understands the guts of it. They chose me because, not only did I have that experience, but I guess I have a reputation for being a quick study and actually pretty impatient with bureaucracy. My motto is don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. In a company, like GM, that has management roots that are similar to those of the U.S. military, that's something you need to navigate through. How much do you know about the Net? I started to use the Net when I was in Brazil in 1992, 1993, to find out how my favorite baseball team was doing, the Chicago Cubs -- because they didn't report baseball scores in Brazil. While I don't pretend to be a technologist, I do think I understand it and have a great opportunity to spend time with people like Scott McNealy [of Sun Microsystems] and George Colony [of Forrester Research] ... last night [I] had dinner with Michael Dell. Because we're General Motors we're pretty interesting to them. We've had some people like Scott saying, "You're running the largest Internet start-up, hopefully you'll impart some lessons to us." |
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