General Motors (GM -0.04%) is well-known for making massive SUVs and trucks, and it's made good money loading those vehicles up with premium options to ring up a hefty price tag. But GM isn't going to make investors richer over the next two decades doing the status quo.

It can, however, make investors richer through innovation and new revenue streams. And that's exactly what GM hopes its Cruise company -- which it owns 80% of -- can do.

Cruise is the real deal

For those wondering if Cruise is simply a way for GM to show investors it's trying to innovate, that would be selling the company short. In fact, in a report from Guidehouse Insights, which assessed strategy and execution for 18 companies developing automated driving technologies, Cruise was ranked in the top four, narrowly behind Waymo, Mobileye, and Baidu, and well ahead of the other competitors.

Further, GM is the only automaker with both Level 2 and Level 4 autonomous-vehicle (AV) technology offerings and a scalable vehicle build for autonomous driving ready for production.

Assessing the time to scale

GM's Cruise has moved beyond research and development and is now charging for its robotaxi service in San Francisco, and it's also preparing for commercial growth. In fact, it took Cruise's operations 15 months to achieve a million fully driverless miles, and only 90 days to bump that figure by half-million more.

This year, Cruise is going to expand its markets in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin, Texas, and will begin testing robotaxis in Houston, on path to its goal of generating $1 billion in revenue by 2025.

The key for Cruise will be accelerating its business to profitability, but take a look at a couple figures from GM's first-quarter report. By 2030, GM expects to double company revenue to a range of $275 billion-$315 billion with the expectation that roughly 50% of its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of revenue will be from new business and software.

That is a massive pivot from the status quo for traditional automakers. It also targets new businesses to generate margins above 20% by 2030, much juicier than the high single digits for traditional automakers.

Risks along the way

Ford Motor and General Motors are typically close competitors -- for instance, going head to head in full-size trucks in the U.S. market. But in a rare divergence of strategy, Ford has opted to stop developing its own AV technology for now, while GM has put the pedal to the metal.

One reason for the differing strategies is that Ford believes driverless vehicle technology is far away from being profitable and that it won't necessarily need to develop it on its own. Cruise's result for the first quarter, adjusted for earnings before interest and taxes, was a loss of roughly $600 million, about double the prior year's loss. Suffice it to say Ford's argument is understandable in the near term. https://media.gm.com/content/dam/Media/gmcom/investor/2023/apr/q1-earnings-deck-and-cy-2023.pdf slide 20

That's the risk for both automakers. If Cruise succeeds and hits management's targets, it will be a huge long-term win for investors and a tremendous advantage over competitors. If Cruise fails, or reaches its targets much more slowly with higher-than-anticipated costs, Ford investors might be glad the company pumped the brakes.

One thing is clear: GM won't make investors much richer with the status quo, and if it accomplishes its goals with Cruise, investors will be well-rewarded in the decades ahead. That's how GM will make you richer in two decades, and this will be one of the most important developments for investors to keep an eye on.