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Article snippet: DETROIT — The chief executive of General Motors, an automaker synonymous with Detroit, saw the future of driving not in the Motor City but on the streets of San Francisco. Mary T. Barra, a G.M. lifer who had worked her way from engineer to the top, was in the back seat of a prototype self-driving electric car as it wound its way through the city’s downtown a year ago. She wanted to see for herself whether automation was ready to take over from a driver — safely, and on a mass scale. How would it react, for example, when it reached an intersection as a light turned yellow? Driving in a situation like that, “you have to make a decision,” she recalled in a recent interview. “Generally if you decide to go, you decide to speed up. Or you stop.” If the technology works, she said, it will make the right decision: “The car knows.” After that drive, Ms. Barra made her own decision to speed up, convinced that such cars were worth betting the company on. Within six months after what she called her “aha! moment” in San Francisco, a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Bolts, the company’s new electric car, was being built at a G.M. assembly plant in Michigan, the pace accelerated at the direction of Ms. Barra and her senior management team. It was a first for any major car company, and the first leg of a race she is determined to win. The question now is whether a company identified with the industry’s bygone glory days can be a trendsetter in 21st-century transportation — and be... Link to the full article to read more