By Joseph White
DETROIT (Reuters) -General Motors confirmed on Thursday that Travis Katz, CEO of its BrightDrop electric commercial vehicle unit, is leaving the company, without elaborating on the reason for his pending departure.
Katz, a longtime tech entrepreneur who joined GM in 2020 from venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
GM said BrightDrop, the unit it launched in early 2021, will no longer operate separately from the parent company. When it was first launched, officials talked about BrightDrop as a startup within GM that had operational freedom. Now, its teams will be fully integrated into GM.
“Bringing BrightDrop fully into GM means the beginning of a new chapter,” GM said in a blog.
GM said it still intends to build up production of the BrightDrop Zevo vans, which is expected to resume in the spring and will be supported by the launch of the Ingersoll plant’s new battery-module operations.
BrightDrop idled the Ingersoll plant in October due to delays in the delivery of battery modules that power the vehicles.
In March 2021, Katz described himself as a “nontraditional person to find in the automotive world.” He also called himself “an entrepreneur and a tech guy.”
(Reporting by Joe White, Ben Klayman, David Shepardson and Hyunjoo Jin; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)
