Investing.com -- General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) climbed in afterhours trading Tuesday after the automaker announced that it would halt funding to produce robotaxis, refocussing efforts to develop autonomous driving on personal vehicles in a move that could significantly lower its spending.
General Motors was up more than 1% in afterhours following the news.
The company plans to combine its majority-owned robotaxi firm Cruise LLC and GM technical teams into a single effort to advance autonomous and assisted driving technologies.
This shift comes as GM redirects focus towards enhancing its Super Cruise feature, currently available on more than 20 GM vehicle models and logging over 10 million miles per month.
GM expects the restructuring to lower spending by more than $1 billion annually after the proposed plan is completed in the first half of 2025.
The automaker, which owns about 90% of Cruise, has agreements with other shareholders that will raise its ownership to more than 97% and plans to acquire the remaining shares.
GM said it would work with the Cruise leadership team to restructure and refocus Cruise’s operations.