Apparently ousted Cruise LLC CEO Dan Ammann is credited with shrinking parent General Motors Co.’s global footprint, sharpening the automaker’s financial performance and leaving Detroit to take leadership of the carmaker’s autonomous-vehicle maker.
But two sources familiar with the situation said Friday the former Wall Street banker’s vision for the relationship between Cruise and GM increasingly diverged from that of GM CEO Mary Barra and the automaker’s board of directors. The chasm proved too wide to bridge given the automaker’s hard pivot to electrification, self-driving technology and pressure to realize that future.