GM picks up EV and autonomous pace with 3,000 new jobs

American automotive giant General Motors (GM) announced this week that it would move to hire 3,000 new employees across its engineering, design, and IT divisions to support the upscaling of the company’s development of autonomous and electric vehicles.

General Motors announced on Monday the plan to add 3,000 new technology jobs as part of its bid to transform the future of product development and software as a service.

Through the latest batch of hires, General Motors will offer more remote opportunities than ever before – unsurprisingly seeing the benefits of remote working enforced on the world through the global COVID-19 pandemic. The company will also be looking to increase diversity and inclusion through the new raft of jobs.

“As we evolve and grow our software expertise and services, it’s important that we continue to recruit and add diverse talent,” said GM president Mark Reuss. “This will clearly show that we’re committed to further developing the software we need to lead in EVs, enhance the customer experience and become a software expertise-driven workforce.”

Hiring is expected to begin immediately and run through the first quarter of 2021 and will play a big part in transitioning the company towards a focus on electric vehicles.

General Motors is currently planning on delivering 23 new electric vehicles onto roads by 2023, all of which will be based on the new Ultium battery pack design – a joint venture project with South Korean chemical company, LG Chem, announced back in December of last year.

The company is aiming to increase sales of EVs to 1 million by the middle of the decade, and while some analysts expect GM to fall short of this, Wood Mackenzie predicts the company will end up seeing EV sales skyrocket to 5 million by 2030.

On an even larger scale, GM is looking to advance its vision of zero crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion through the development and integration of new software and services.

Some of the new job openings include those for electrical system engineers, infotainment software engineers, developers for Java, Android, iOS, and other platforms, and controls engineers.

New hires is not GM’s only plan for pushing its EV vision forwards, with reports this week quoting Ken Morris, GM vice president of autonomous and electric vehicles programs, in a call with reporters on Monday that the company is moving forward at least two upcoming EVs following the debut of its all-electric 2022 Hummer – the first vehicle on GM’s next-generation Ultium EV vehicle platform.

“We’re moving as fast as we can in terms of developing vehicles virtually, more so than we ever have by far,” Morris said. “We are doing things virtually, more effective than we ever have.”

GM’s shares have seen a significant bounce this week, reaching a new 52-week high, thanks in large part to the overall stock market rebound on news of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. However, GM’s announcements and the election of Joe Biden as the next US President likely also had a part in the company’s share bounce.

“We’re looking forward to working with the Biden administration and support policies that will foster greater adoption of EVs across all 50 states and encourage investments in R&D and manufacturing,” Morris said in the call.

“At the end of the day, climate change is a global concern and the best way to remove automobile emissions from the environmental equation is all-electric, zero-emissions future.”