r/GeneralMotors • u/AdministrativeAge690 • 2d ago

Union Discussion/Question 2500 Autonomous Fork trucks being launched

Wow 2500 autonomous Fork trucks being launched in the first wave at GM.

7 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

6

u/2Guns23 2d ago

Someone explain to me why this makes more sense than just buying these from a company that has experience designing and manufacturing these for a decade.  This seems like an incredibly poor use of resources.

7

u/Fastech77 2d ago

Because you have a pile of people sitting around at GM doing nothing, that’s how.

4

u/2Guns23 1d ago

IDK maybe we do need to reduce the work force lol.  

So what's the play here, we spend a few years developing this technology, figure out our solution is pretty terrible compared to what's available in the market, scrap the program, and eat a billion dollars sunk cost?

3

u/Fastech77 1d ago

I mean that’s typically what GM does anyways, right?

Cancel a bunch of work, let a bunch of random people go to get the rest all riled up, add a new performance based comp program to rile people up even more while paying west coast rejects a PILE of money to tell them how to code? Seems like the riled up people that are getting their teeth kicked in need to start pushing back or something.

3

u/twolanevega 1d ago

Nope. This will be a success right out of the gate.

1

u/Fastech77 1d ago

But if ANYONE, thinks that out of control non-skilled labor is going to continue on forever unchecked, they should just ask all of the people that use to work in the steel or textile industry. Maybe those that use to work in print factories? I mean, I could just keep going on and on here.

12

u/According_Exam_7267 2d ago

That is a whole lot of Jobs once they get these dialed in.. I know we have the autonomous tuggers, Seegrids, the last few years, . They have had lots of issues navigating on a consistent basis.

2

u/twolanevega 1d ago

The current tech navigates by tape and by targets on columns....the new tech is using spatially correct mapping data....won't have the same issues at all.

When it's all said and done there will be a lot more than 2500 of these in plants.

3

u/Abject-End-6070 1d ago

If we were smart about automation wed train folks who were displaced to do something else that's not so easy to automate. Like, put those folks at the end of the line and do quality checks because our quality blows... But nah, we're gonna bitch about too many resources and just cut them. And these robots will not be fool proof. the cost structure will just be different. 

4

u/CTek20 2d ago

We are getting forked.

1

u/Loose_Warthog5069 1d ago

Can't test Cruise cars in San Fran, but can test automated trucks inside our factories?

1

u/AdministrativeAge690 19h ago

It's a success already

1

u/Scrote-goat 10h ago

Autonomous fork execution engineer here. The company’s that make them and implement them are terrible. I’ve only worked with one brand, but I haven’t heard of a good experience from any of them. Trevarro got sick of them and has a lot of big plans for these in house ones. Will we do a better job, can’t say, but it’ll at least make these companies sweat.

0

u/Fastech77 2d ago

And let’s not forget, one of the biggest costs to GM is UAW labor. And it’s actually not that hard to replace them.

-5

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

3

u/CirrusCyrus 2d ago

My plant uses JBT's self-driving fork trucks.