Meet Rashed Haq: GM’s new Vice President of Vehicle Autonomy. With a background ranging from cutting-edge physics research to hands-on startup experience at Cruise, Rashed has consistently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in robotics and autonomy.
We sat down with Rashed to hear about what brought him to GM and the collaborative spirit that powers GM’s AV team.
Can you share your journey to GM?
As a kid growing up in Dubai, I was always deeply fascinated by complex systems and how things work. Autonomous machines and robots were a big part of it—I would imagine cars that could drive me to my friends’ places rather than having to bike in 110-degree heat. After doing research in quantum computing and black holes, I decided to build complex things rather than just studying them —leading me to startups in San Francisco and building AI decision engines for large enterprises.
Then, I went all‑in on autonomous vehicles at Cruise, helping to launch one of the first AV services in a major U.S. city. Joining GM was a natural next step: we have the resources and ambition to bring physical AI — from AVs to broader robotics — to the world.
What motivates your passion for AI and autonomy—broadly and specifically at GM?
When I think of Physical AI and autonomy, one thing I’m passionate about is the enormous potential for impact. These technologies have the power to reshape the world, much like how AI is transforming the way we work in just a few short years. Working on AV at GM lets me pursue these ideas at a scale where the impact can transform everyday life. Another thing that inspires me is working with others who share that same enthusiasm, and care deeply about solving these hard problems.
Talk about the talent we have on the AV team at GM. What makes them best in class?
Building an AV stack is incredibly complex, and GM has brought together the full range of experts needed to do it — world‑class software and robotics engineers, AV hardware specialists, applied scientists and Machine Learning engineers, plus the teams that are great at running training, simulation, and cloud infrastructure. The team’s deep expertise and strong research-engineering loop can translate cutting-edge research on open problems into reliable systems— these are some of the things that make this team exceptional.
What do you see as the biggest unlock for autonomous systems over the next few years? Where does GM play a role?
Autonomy is far from solved. And I see there being a few big unlocks:
First is talent: we already have incredible people in the organization, and we’re continuing to hire top talent, which unlocks innovation and engineering excellence. Second is high-quality multimodal data, and GM’s scale allows us to learn from millions of miles of real-world driving, from our engineering vehicles and de-identified data from our customer fleet. Next is scalability. We can build a vehicle roughly every 60 seconds in some of our plants, and with Super Cruise we’ve proven adoption rate: we’ve already logged more than 800 million miles. This shows both our ability to build at scale and have a customer base ready to adopt these products.
That combination puts GM in a unique position to industrialize physical AI and autonomy.
What’s the ultimate goal of vehicle autonomy at GM?
Our goal is autonomy in all vehicles, everywhere, for everyone. We’ll start with highway autonomy in single vehicle line. Then, like we did with Super Cruise Driver Assistance Technology1 , we’ll roll the technology out across more vehicle lines. And at the same time, we will continue to increase the car’s autonomous capability until we have full-autonomy driveway to driveway. We approach all of this with a safety-first mindset: safety isn’t a constraint or a byproduct; safety is the product.
For more insights on what GM is focused on in autonomy, read Rashed’s piece, Building the driver of the future: autonomy at GM over on GM's newly launched engineering blog.
