Yahoo Finance GM CEO Faces New Congress Hearing Over Safety
General Motors (NYSE: GM - news) boss Mary Barra has promised changes to avert a repeat of safety issues linked to 13 deaths, as she faced a new Congressional hearing.
"That is not how GM does business," said Ms Barra, who took over as CEO less than three months ago.
"I think we in the past had more of a cost culture," she said, adding that it is moving toward a more customer-focused culture.
Ms Barra appears before a Senate subcommittee later.
A faulty ignition issue in small car has been linked to at least 13 deaths.
Since February, GM has recalled 2.6 million cars - mostly Chevrolet Cobalts and Saturn Ions - over the faulty switch, which can cause the engine to cut off in traffic, disabling the power steering, power brakes and air bags and making it difficult to control the vehicle.
During the hearing before a House subcommittee on Tuesday, she acknowledged under often testy questioning that the company took too long to recall cars equipped with the switch.
As relatives of the crash victims looked on, Ms Barra acknowledged that GM used the ignition switch even when it knew the part did not meet its own specifications.
However, she deflected some questions, saying she was awaiting the results of an internal GM investigation.
At a press conference after the hearing, she said it "angers me that we had a situation that took more than a decade to correct".
GM has said that, in 2005, company engineers proposed solutions to the switch problem, but the car maker concluded that none represented "an acceptable business case".
Ms Barra testified that the fix to the switch, if undertaken in 2007, would have cost GM about $100m, compared with "substantially" more now.
She also announced at the hearing that GM had hired Kenneth Feinberg - who handled the fund for the victims of 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and the BP (LSE: BP.L - news) oil spill - to explore ways to compensate victims of accidents in the GM cars.
"Ms Barra held her ground, claiming that today's General Motors is a different company from the one whose corporate culture allowed this issue to fester for a decade," said Jack Nerad, executive editorial director at car valuation service Kelley Blue Book.
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