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I’m dreading the day when a chat will inevitably come where I have to somehow negotiate that my parents will no longer drive. It’s a circle of life moment, many people go through it, but that won’t make it any easier. I’m not alone.
On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Senior Vice President of Vehicle Products at General Motors Jaclyn McQuaid told The Drive, “I still remember the day I had to take the car keys away from my grandma, and she lost her independence.” The comment came as context to the answer “Oh, but I envision a day when when we can” when asked if there’s a future where a GM vehicle doesn’t need a steering wheel anymore.
Listen below to the moment McQuaid addresses a future of autonomous vehicles that gives people their independence and freedom that might be taken away as they age.
As passionate as McQuaid is about the idea, it’s not happening tomorrow. “That could absolutely be some point in our future, I don’t know when,” the executive said.
Expanding on why this is important McQuaid said, “I would love a day when we get to that level of autonomy where we don’t have to take that level of independence away from the people that we love, and the vehicle can be trusted to do for them exactly what it needs to do for them. So I definitely think it’s in our future, it’s something we’re working really hard towards.”
As technology progresses and the reality of aging and mortality takes hold there’s a convergence that opens new doors that past generations never experienced. “I also think it’s just the advancement of societal needs and the role that General Motors can play in society, and giving people back what they had as they advanced through the years and what they were at risk of losing,” McQuaid said.
Making it personal, McQuaid said, “I am personally incredibly proud of the work GM is doing towards personal autonomy, and I think it’s going to have a role to play for, you know, me one day as I get to that point in my life, and and many of us, but we’re giving people back their livelihood with personal autonomy.”
While robotaxis, such as Waymo, exist today in multiple cities McQuaid noted they are confined to those cities. That’s not the future she’s talking about.
McQuaid explained, “What I’m talking about is somebody getting in their car in New York and saying, ‘I want to go visit my daughter who lives in LA. Let’s go.’ And they own the vehicle, it is their personal autonomous vehicle, can take them where they need to go, it can take them to pick up their dry cleaning, it can take them to, you know, pick the dog up from daycare, it can take them wherever they want to go, and it can take them across the country to go see their daughter.”
What McQuaid just described is the autonomous tech that GM’s Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson is calling “Mission Mode.” It’s the next stage after GM’s eyes-off self-driving tech moves off highways.
One has to imagine the idea of telling their parents they are no longer fit to drive might be easier if they didn’t fully lose their independence and ability to get from one place to another without relying on others. Here’s hoping it might happen before my parents require “the talk.”
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
