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Prior to the accident, Cruise was planning an aggressive expansion of robotaxis outside its home market where the majority of its vehicles operated. 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. We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities. Building the worlds most advanced self-driving technology doesn't happen by accident.
Cruise recalls all self-driving cars after grisly accident and California ban
Sometimes it's just a sense that the tech we all depend on may be harming us in ways we don't understand and can't control. The layoffs come just a day after nine senior leaders (SLT) at Cruise, who worked in its commercial operations, legal and policy departments, were dismissed by the company’s board. COO Gil West and David Estrada, who was head of government affairs, were among that group. Anyone laid off will also receive their 2023 bonus (eligible target payout) on January 5, 2024. 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.
Driverless by design
Carpooling in the age of smartphones hasn’t exactly been the runaway success that ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft have hoped. But Cruise thinks its abundance of space can help minimize the friction. For example, it doesn’t look like a toaster on wheels, as some autonomous “people movers” tend to do.
Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars
Google’s Firefly vehicle, audaciously designed by YooJung Ahn, is widely considered to be the first car tested publicly without a steering wheel or pedals. We believe that self-driving technology will save lives and make roads safer. Cruise, the embattled GM self-driving car subsidiary, is laying off 900 employees, or about 24% of its workforce, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The layoffs are part of a plan to slash costs and attempt to revamp the company following an October 2 incident that left a pedestrian stuck under and then dragged by one of its robotaxis. "To be clear, human drivers will text, they'll be distracted. There's the saying, 'the lights are on, but nobody's home,'" Koopman says. Meanwhile, The Intercept reported that Cruise cars had difficulty detecting children, according to internal documents.
General Motors is slowing the expansion of its Cruise automated driving division and significantly cutting spending at the unit after suspending operations in response to growing safety concerns about its driverless cars. Based on police reports and initial video footage from Cruise, the woman was first struck by a hit-and-run human driver whose vehicle threw her into the path of the driverless car. A year ago, the future seemed bright for the driverless car startup Cruise. As 2022 wrapped up, CEO Kyle Vogt took to Twitter to post about the company's autonomous vehicles rolling onto the streets of San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix. 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.
Which is exactly how I felt after my last trip to San Francisco, when I took several rides in Waymo's robotaxis. Barra reiterated plans for Cruise to be more “deliberate” when operations eventually resume at the troubled self-driving vehicle subsidiary. For GM, that includes slashing spending at Cruise “by hundreds of millions of dollars” in 2024, an action that most expected would result in widespread layoffs.
Exclusive look at Cruise’s first driverless car without a steering wheel or pedals
Even before the October incident, tension over self-driving cars was simmering in San Francisco. Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.’s expansion plans. Its official name is “Origin,” and Kyle Vogt, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Cruise, is clearly excited to be showing it off. With a broad smile, he reaches out and touches a button on the side, causing the doors to slide open with a little whoosh like something out of Star Wars.
Cruise and Waymo also ran into problems with San Francisco's police and fire departments. At government hearings, the agencies testified that the driverless cars were a nuisance. They tallied nearly 75 incidents where self-driving cars got in the way of rescue operations, including driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders.
The Cruise Safety Report: Advancing our safety mission through a transparent and holistic approach
How Cruise went from buzzy self-driving startup to 'public safety risk' - Fast Company
How Cruise went from buzzy self-driving startup to 'public safety risk'.
Posted: Mon, 18 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Majority owned by General Motors since 2016, Cruise combines a culture of innovative technology and safety with a history of manufacturing and automotive excellence. Cruise has received funding from other leading companies and investors—including Honda, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, and Walmart. Learn how our data visualization tool shaped the future of autonomous driving. Cruise ridehail services are not available at this time, but you can join the waitlist to be one of the first.
Cruise is trying to recapture some of that early magic with this vehicle. But it’s also attempting to be more pragmatic and attuned to the realities of growing and scaling a real business. Cruise has been working on the design of the Origin for over three years, but Honda’s involvement “super charged” the effort. The two automakers didn’t collaborate on every tiny detail; instead, they split up the work based on their expertise. GM was responsible for the base vehicle design and the electric powertrain, while Honda helped create the interior’s “efficient use of space,” Vogt says.
That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to the expansion. 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. While the department of motor vehicles did not elaborate on specific reasons for its suspension of Cruise’s license, the agency accused Cruise of misrepresenting safety information about the autonomous technology in its vehicles. The revocation followed a series of incidents that heightened concerns about the hazards and inconveniences caused by Cruise’s robotaxis. Cruise executives said at the time they wanted to take a measured business approach that preserves cash and improves safety culture in an attempt to put GM’s troubled autonomous vehicle subsidiary on the right path.
By August, California had given Cruise permission to run around 300 robotaxis throughout San Francisco. And the company had started testing in several more cities across the country, including Dallas, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte. "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. Cruise has a strong history in Phoenix and it is home to a large number of Cruise employees. It’s a city that supports AV and transportation innovation, and Phoenix leaders strive to ensure the metro area is an incubator for advanced technology. We plan to expand this effort to other select cities as we continue to engage with officials and community leaders.
As we begin this journey, we look forward to partnering with local communities to jointly achieve our shared mission of making transportation safer for all. Over the past several weeks we have communicated directly with officials, first responders, and community leaders in cities we’ve previously operated in to share updates on our path forward. We are committed to safely deploying our technology in close collaboration with officials and communities at every step. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles last week accused Cruise of omitting the dragging of the woman from a video of the incident it initially provided to the agency.
Having current and accurate information will help an autonomous vehicle understand where it is and the location of certain road features. We also measure our perception and prediction systems against our elevated performance criteria, using trained safety drivers as a benchmark. At this stage, no autonomous systems are engaged and the vehicles will not carry public passengers.
"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. 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’re reintroducing a small fleet of manually-operated vehicles to begin mapping with trained safety drivers behind the wheel.
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