William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

July 22, 2013

Electric automaker Tesla has been a tour-de-force over the past year. Sales of the Model S have exceeded expectations; profits are though the roof; the company has been implementing free charging stations across the U.S. for owners and other things. These success have caught the attention of General Motors. More specially, GM CEO Dan Akerson.

According to Bloomberg, Akerson has created a small team to study Tesla and how it could affect the company.

“He thinks Tesla could be a big disrupter if we’re not careful. History is littered with big companies that ignored innovation that was coming their way because you didn’t know where you could be disrupted,” said GM vice chairman, Steve Girsky.

The formation of the group comes from Akerson's desire to change GM’s culture. He has refocused what is being spent of research and development, making the implementation much faster, and number of items to keep up and keep focus.

“We had people with 20 and 30 patents. I was kind of a downer. I said, ‘How many have we commercialized? How many are in our cars?’ None,” Akerson recently told a crowd in Houston.

Source: Bloomberg

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at william.maley@cheersandgears.com or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.