General Motors' Electric Vehicle Unit Hires Former Tesla Head Of Vehicle Safety

General Motors Company GM has hired a former Tesla Inc. TSLA engineer, Louise Zhang, as the new vice president of product safety at Cruise, its self-driving vehicle division.

What Happened

Cruise, GM’s majority-owned self-driving unit,  announced Zhang’s appointment in a Medium Blog on Wednesday, which also carried a Q&A section with the engineer.

Explaining the motivation behind joining GM’s self-driving unit Zhang said, “It takes many great minds working together in a productive way to solve such a difficult problem as self-driving vehicles. Cruise has the right talent and company culture to achieve this ambitious goal.”

Why It Matters

Zhang was the Senior Director of Engineering at Lucid Motors, an electric vehicle start-up, before joining her present position, according to Cruise.

Zhang also worked as the head of Tesla’s vehicle safety team. Tesla’s vehicles received five-star safety ratings in the United States New Car Assessment Program and the Euro NCAP under Zhang’s leadership.

Zhang’s skills include forensics, and she has advised attorneys on litigation involving vehicle crashes.

The engineer joins Cruise as the company plans to lay off nearly 8% of its workforce, mainly outside its engineering operations.

Cruise has also added Regina E. Dugan to its board of directors. Dugan served as head of Google’s Advanced Technology, parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL GOOG, and also lead Facebook Inc.’s FB hardware group known as Building 8.

Price Action

General Motors shares traded 1.39% lower at $28.35 in the after-hours session on Wednesday. The shares had closed the regular session 3.72% lower at $28.75.