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Cruise even bought a full-page ad in The New York Times declaring “human drivers are terrible” and holding up its driverless cars as the only solution. 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. "In October 2023, we paused operations of our fleet to focus on rebuilding trust with regulators and the communities we serve, and to redesign our approach to safety," Cruise said in a blog post. "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." According to the Times, the company “put a priority on the speed of the program over safety.” In many ways, it echoes Uber’s infamous approach to self-driving cars, which cut corners on safety in order to get more cars on the road.
Driving cities forward
"We have not set a timeline for deployment," said Morrissey of putting the modified Bolts back on roads. "Our goal is to relaunch in one city with supervised driving with Bolt-based Cruise AVs (autonomous vehicles) as soon as possible once we have taken steps to rebuild trust with regulators and the public." 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 to relaunch vehicles with human drivers in Phoenix
Robotaxi companies had an active week, expanding coverage and services while the world waits for Tesla’s promised self-driving taxi in August. GM has owned Cruise since 2016 and Cruise was operating its robo-taxi fleets in San Francisco, Austin, Texas, and Phoenix until it stopped all operations and recalled its fleet of 950 modified Bolts in November after the incident. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened investigations into Cruise following the October incident in California. General Motors President Mark Reuss said Thursday that GM plans for its self-driving subsidiary Cruise to get back on U.S. roads in the next year or two but said it might take longer to win back the trust of the public. Initially, that means taking more of a direct hand in Cruise’s operation.
GM’s big bet on driverless cars turns sour
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. "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. We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities. Power Auto Summit in Las Vegas, ahead of the National Auto Dealers Association convention, to a crowd of mostly car dealers.
GM CEO Mary Barra would routinely invite him to appear on earnings calls or to speak at investor conferences in a sign that the automaker was fully invested in Cruise. 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. 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.
"Cruise is executing a global strategy with the right partners," said Grayson Brulte, president at consultancy Brulte & Co. "At the end of the day it will come down to who can cut the best deals which long-term generate revenue and profits." In January, the San Francisco-based startup said Microsoft Corp would join General Motors, Japan's Honda Motor Co Ltd and institutional investors for a combined new equity investment of over $2 billion. "We are focused on our path to commercialization right now but the IPOs happening in the space right now are a great indication of the strength of the industry and the opportunity self-driving presents," a Cruise spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters. The mishandling of the information resulted in parent company GM slashing spending and taking greater control of Cruise.
More from this stream Self-driving cars: Google and others map the road to automated vehicles
Unique GM Cruise robotaxis spotted around Grand Blanc recently - WJRT
Unique GM Cruise robotaxis spotted around Grand Blanc recently.
Posted: Mon, 04 Mar 2024 18:10:33 GMT [source]
As a result, California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s permit to operate driverless cars in the state. Technological issues aside, what really put Cruise in hot water late last year was its response to the incident. Regulators accused the company of withholding information about the crash, only sharing that a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian who had been flung into its path after first being struck by a human-driven vehicle. In 2017, Cruise was conducting testing on public roads with Cruise AVs in San Francisco, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the metropolitan Detroit area. 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.
His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State. 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. The company said in January that investigations or inquiries into the incident included those by the California DMV, the California Public Utilities Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. 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.
Pedestrian injuries
Cruise has received funding from other leading companies and investors—including Honda, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, and Walmart. Cruise ridehail services are not available at this time, but you can join the waitlist to be one of the first. We’re working to bring new transportation options that work for you and your community. In November, the Detroit Free Press reported GM paused production of the Cruise Origin at Factory Zero.
The announcement at CES certainly seemed to confirm that version of events. The automaker’s driverless car subsidiary, Cruise, announced last night the resignation of Kyle Vogt as CEO. The decision came over a month after an incident in which a hit-and-run victim became pinned under a Cruise vehicle and then was dragged 20 feet to the side of the road.
GM's Cruise Attempts Comeback for Its Driverless Fleet—With Human Drivers First - The Wall Street Journal
GM's Cruise Attempts Comeback for Its Driverless Fleet—With Human Drivers First.
Posted: Tue, 09 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The D.M.V. said the company had “misrepresented” its technology and told Cruise to shut down its driverless car operations in the state. Cruise said its "goal is to resume driverless operations," however it did not provide a timeline for doing so. It also did not announce a timetable for expanding human-driven vehicles to other cities. The redeployed vehicles will not operate as they previously did — as robotaxis — but will "create maps and gather road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix," the company said. The relaunch comes after the company ceased operations weeks after an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi after being struck by a separate vehicle. General Motors' Cruise self-driving vehicle unit will redeploy cars on U.S. roadways Tuesday for the first time since October, beginning with a small fleet of human-driven vehicles in Phoenix, the company said.
The probe also investigated allegations of a coverup by Cruise leadership, but did not find any evidence to support those claims. Cruise's path to autonomous driving creates opportunities for increased mobility and independence. "Another excellent @Cruise ride. From a hotel to a grocery store and back to the hotel - fully autonomously. If you think the future is not here yet, you’re just yet to try it. Long autonomy. P.S. Tweeting this from an AV." But Reuss said Thursday GM remains committed to developing Cruise's technology and fixing the company. Cruise's relationship with Walmart includes a trial delivery service in Scottsdale, Arizona, announced in November.
General Motors’ Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post. The cars will be in “manual mode,” so they won’t be driving themselves. Last month Cruise achieved a significant milestone toward its vision of a safer, more sustainable and accessible transportation future as it became the first company to offer fully driverless rides to the public in a major U.S. city. Rather than sit back and let driverless cars come to them eventually, Barra insisted on GM staying in the driver’s seat.
