GM's Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix but people are driving them

Table Of Content

• GM's Cruise plans to enter 'a large number of markets' in 2023
• Are autonomous vehicles viable?
• More from this stream Self-driving cars: Google and others map the road to automated vehicles
• Promoting transportation priorities in SF
• Partnership is essential to powering Cruise for Good: Behind the scenes of our meal delivery program

Two days later, Cruise went further and voluntarily suspended all of its driverless operations around the country, taking 400 or so driverless cars off the road. Since then, Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media. Cruise has been under growing pressure after regulators said it failed to fully disclose details of the October accident. Last month, Cruise paused all driverless and supervised car trips in the United States and expanded a safety review of its robotaxis and CEO Kyle Vogt and chief product officer Daniel Kan both stepped down. Cruise will resume manual driving of its autonomous vehicles to create maps and gather road information in certain cities, starting with Phoenix, the company said Tuesday. The GM subsidiary already had a presence in Phoenix before it pulled its entire U.S.-based fleet last year following an incident in San Francisco that left a pedestrian stuck under and dragged by a Cruise robotaxi.

GM's Cruise plans to enter 'a large number of markets' in 2023

Barra herself went onstage at CES in 2022 and declared that GM would sell fully autonomous vehicles, powered by Cruise’s technology, to regular people by mid-decade. Trying to correct what it saw as inaccurate media portrayals of the October incident, Cruise omitted information and provided “incomplete facts” and video to the press and public, according to the blog post. The post did not make clear how those actions fit with the broader assertion that there was no intent to mislead. A separate technical review by engineering firm Exponent found that the Cruise vehicle experienced mapping errors and incorrectly identified hitting the woman as a side-impact collision, the blog post stated. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also investigating the crash. But there's growing concern across the industry, not just with GM and Cruise, about the viability of autonomous vehicles, or AVs, as a business instead of as a niche science project.

Are autonomous vehicles viable?

"We went from an all-time high to an all-time low and from being an industry leader to temporary pausing all of our operations," he said. Initially, that means taking more of a direct hand in Cruise’s operation. Barra reportedly told employees that GM general counsel Craig Glidden will serve as Cruise’s co-president alongside Mo Elshenawy, who will also become chief technology officer. Former Tesla president Jon McNeill, who’s been a board member at GM for several years, was named vice chairman of the Cruise board alongside Barra. Founded and headquartered in San Francisco, Cruise's goal is to drive change by building the world's most advanced self-driving, all-electric, shared vehicles that safely connect people to the places, things, and experiences they care about.

More from this stream Self-driving cars: Google and others map the road to automated vehicles

A third-party probe into the October incident and subsequent fallout, which was ordered by GM and Cruise, found culture issues, ineptitude and poor leadership were at the center of regulatory oversights that led to the accident. The probe also investigated allegations of a coverup by Cruise leadership, but did not find any evidence to support those claims. "As for what's next for me, I plan to spend time with my family and explore some new ideas. Thanks for the great ride!" Vogt wrote. "We'll work through the challenges we have right now at Cruise," Barra said Dec. 4. "We are confident in the team and committed to supporting Cruise as they set the company up for long-term success with a focus on trust, accountability and transparency," GM said Thursday in a statement related to announced layoffs at Cruise. Despite all that, GM appears to believe it can eventually move forward with Cruise.

New leader of GM's Cruise acknowledges 'all-time low' amid safety review

"We've made significant progress, guided by new company leadership, recommendations from third-party experts, and a focus on a close partnership with the communities in which our vehicles operate. We are committed to this improvement as a continuous effort." Cruise has not announced when or where it will resume driverless operations. The company’s main operations were historically based in San Francisco, but Cruise lost its permits to operate there following the accident.

GM's Cruise is putting robotaxis back on the road — with drivers - Quartz

GM's Cruise is putting robotaxis back on the road — with drivers.

Posted: Tue, 09 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Cruise has said it will conduct layoffs later this month but on Tuesday declined to provide much detail to staff. It has stopped taking questions from staffers at all-hands meetings, previously a fixture. He said Cruise's approach to developing self-driving cars that were simply better than humans has been "wrong" and "not what the stakeholders are expecting from us."

The announcement at CES certainly seemed to confirm that version of events. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on October 16 opened an investigation into Cruise vehicles after receiving reports of two pedestrian injuries, including the October 2 incident. The Cruise cars "may not have exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway," the agency said.

Still, the company called the relaunched fleet with human drivers "a critical step for validating our self-driving systems as we work towards returning to our driverless mission." "We have not yet made a commitment to where or when we will start supervised or driverless operations," a spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. NHTSA, the CPUC, the California DMV and other regulators were not immediately available for comment on the report. Cruise once operated hundreds of self-driving taxis in California, Texas and other locations, hoping to generate meaningful revenue while perfecting the technology for a broader rollout. On Saturday, one day before resigning, Vogt reportedly apologized to staff in an email. "As CEO, I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is in today. There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating what has happened. We need to double down on safety, transparency, and community engagement," he wrote in the email quoted by Reuters.

GM's self-driving car company Cruise lost $3.48 billion in 2023 - The Washington Post

GM's self-driving car company Cruise lost $3.48 billion in 2023.

Posted: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

And Vogt confidently took the stage at an investor conference and said Cruise’s steering wheel- and pedal-less Origin shuttles were “just days away” from federal approval — despite no such approval pending. Other car companies have sought to put some distance between themselves and the startups working on self-driving cars. But GM has stayed bullish, insisting that the billions of dollars it was sinking into the technology (GM has lost $8.2 billion on Cruise since 2017) would eventually result in a safer future — and a huge payout for the company. Last year, Ford and Volkswagen pulled their funding from Argo AI, forcing the company to cease operations.

“We continue to believe strongly in Cruise’s mission and the potential of its transformative technology as we look to make transportation safer, cleaner and more accessible,” Barra stated in an email to employees, according to TechCrunch. Now Cruise appears to be going back to basics, a sharp pivot away from the aggressive growth strategy the company has been pursuing for the last few years. In 2022, former Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt — who stepped down amid last year’s controversy — told investors that Cruise had “de-risked the technical approach” by applying what worked well in San Francisco to similar ride-share markets.

GM has said the operation can generate revenue of $50 billion a year by 2030. But Cruise faces competition from rival Waymo, which is already operating in Phoenix. Waymo is driving to expand its robotaxi and delivery businesses into Cruise's backyard in San Francisco and other markets Cruise could have in its sights.

Vogt expressed optimism about Cruise's future without him, saying the team is "executing on a solid, multi-year roadmap and an exciting product vision." GM's investment in Cruise and its share of the company's losses have cost the automaker more than $8 billion since 2016, according to annual public filings. The losses have been increasing, including $1.9 billion through the third quarter of this year. Jacobson said the change in Brightdrop was to reduce redundancies and cut costs, as business cases have changed. BrightDrop was expected to generate $1 billion in revenue this year; it's unclear where that stands. Not all of GM's noncore businesses that were launched in recent years have failed.

Founded in 2013, Cruise makes self-driving cars that have the potential to save millions of lives, reshape our cities, give people more spare time, and restore freedom of movement for many. Prior to the accident, Cruise was planning an aggressive expansion of robotaxis outside its home market where the majority of its vehicles operated. Prior to that incident, Cruise had been announcing launches in new cities — including Dallas, Houston and Miami — at a startling pace. Critics accused the company of expanding too fast and cutting corners on safety. Cruise’s four-page post cited “inadequate and uncoordinated internal processes, mistakes in judgment, an ‘us versus them’ mentality with government officials, and a fundamental misunderstanding of regulatory requirements and expectations”. More than 100 people knew details of the incident prior to Cruise’s meetings with regulators, the report found.