General Motors Stock Is Rising After The Bell: What's Driving The Action?

General Motors Co GM shares are rising in Tuesday’s after-hours session after the company announced plans to refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles.

What Happened: After the market close on Tuesday, GM put out a press release announcing a realignment of its autonomous driving strategy to prioritize development of advanced driver assistance systems.

GM now plans to focus on building on the progress of Super Cruise, the company's assisted driving feature currently offered on more than 20 GM vehicle models.

GM intends to combine its majority-owned Cruise LLC and GM technical teams into a single team working on advancing autonomous and assisted driving. Furthermore, GM said it will cease funding Cruise’s robotaxi development work, citing “considerable time and resources” needed to scale the business and an “increasingly competitive” robotaxi market.

"GM is committed to delivering the best driving experiences to our customers in a disciplined and capital efficient manner. Cruise has been an early innovator in autonomy, and the deeper integration of our teams, paired with GM's strong brands, scale, and manufacturing strength, will help advance our vision for the future of transportation,” said Mary Barra, chair and CEO of GM.

GM currently owns about 90% of Cruise, but the company announced agreements with other shareholders that are expected to increase the company’s ownership to 97%. GM plans to pursue the acquisition of the remaining shares. Contingent upon the purchase of the shares and board approval, GM plans to restructure and refocus Cruise’s operations. The company expects the restructuring to cut spending by more than $1 billion annually.

GM executives are set to hold a conference call to discuss the details of the newly announced plans at 4:30 p.m. ET.

GM Price Action: GM shares were up 2.39% after-hours, trading at $54 at the time of publication, according to Benzinga Pro.

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