Cruise Self Driving Cars Autonomous Vehicles Driverless Rides & Delivery

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• ARIZONA TEAMSTERS APPLAUD COMMITTEE PASSAGE OF LEGISLATION TO PROTECT TRANSIT WORKERS
• ARIZONA TEAMSTERS TO CRUISE: STAY OFF OUR STREETS
• Cruise launches public waitlist for its robotaxis in San Francisco
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Last week, a California administrative law judge ruled that Cruise “misled” state officials and ordered company representatives to formally respond. The DMV action came three weeks after a Cruise vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. A woman entered a crosswalk at nighttime and was hit by two cars, the second of which was the Cruise vehicle. First, a Nissan Sentra "tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV," Cruise said in a description of the incident.

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"AV technology, while they've made a lot of progress with it, is unlikely to be profitable anytime in the foreseeable future, certainly not this decade," said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst at Guidehouse Insights. DETROIT — General Motors' plans to diversify its business through trendy industries such as ridesharing and other "mobility" ventures or startups have largely fallen flat since the automaker started investing in such growth areas in 2016. GM said the acquisition will allow it to "accelerate" its autonomous vehicle development efforts. I'm PCMag's managing editor for consumer electronics, overseeing an experienced team of analysts covering smart home, home entertainment, wearables, fitness and health tech, and various other product categories.

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We’re also opening a public waitlist at for when we’re ready to offer even more rides to San Franciscans. We’re calling this the Cruise Rider Community program and people who are nominated by employees or sign up on the waitlist will be incorporated into the pipeline to be among our first public riders. Jacobson declined to disclose whether GM could bring Cruise into the automaker, which has its own autonomous vehicle unit and recently appointed Anantha Kancherla from Meta Platforms to the newly created position of vice president of advanced driver-assistance systems.

ARIZONA TEAMSTERS APPLAUD COMMITTEE PASSAGE OF LEGISLATION TO PROTECT TRANSIT WORKERS

To that end, Cruise is resuming manual driving to create maps and gather road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix. This work is done using human-driven vehicles without autonomous systems engaged, and is a critical step for validating our self-driving systems as we work towards returning to our driverless mission. The suspension comes less than three months after Cruise, and competitor Waymo, received the final permit required to offer commercial robotaxi services across San Francisco 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That permit was issued by the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates commercial driverless ride-hailing permits. However, without the DMV’s permits, which allow for driverless vehicles to be on public roads, the CPUC permit is essentially worthless.

ARIZONA TEAMSTERS TO CRUISE: STAY OFF OUR STREETS

The unit has quickly gone from one of GM's greatest business opportunities to a growing liability. Cruise, of which GM owns more than 80%, has confronted a wave of problems and investigations sparked by an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise self-driving vehicle after the person was struck by another vehicle. The auto maker has acquired Cruise Automation, a San Francisco-based autonomous vehicle technology maker. The companies did not announce financial terms, but Fortune says the deal is valued at more than $1 billion between cash and stock. Cruise’s AV stack is based on AI technology that learns from information gathered through our driving experience and retrains and evolves our models continuously. The fleet learns from every intersection, construction zone, and road sign it encounters, and applies that knowledge to other environments and scenarios – much the same as a human driver learns, but with far more data and the ability to impart that continuous learning across the entire fleet.

A big part of Cruise’s strategy moving forward, as outlined in Tuesday’s blog post, involves reforming and establishing updated incident response and crisis management protocols to ensure more efficient and transparent responses in the future. The company says it will also work on improved engagement with first responders to facilitate trainings in each precinct it plans to operate in. The portion of the video that the DMV says it did not initially view showed the Cruise robotaxi, after coming to a complete stop, attempting a pullover maneuver while the pedestrian was underneath the vehicle.

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General Motors robotaxi unit Cruise seeks firm road ahead - Automotive News

General Motors robotaxi unit Cruise seeks firm road ahead.

Posted: Thu, 21 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The company has come under the microscope in its hometown of San Francisco, where it operates around 400 robotaxis, after a string of incidents of stalled vehicles that have caused traffic jams and blocked emergency responders. The California Department of Motor Vehicles asked Cruise to reduce its fleet size after one of its vehicles collided with a fire truck, injuring one passenger. This happened days after Cruise, and its competitor Waymo, had received final approval to expand commercial, fully autonomous services across the city 24/7. Cruise has received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test driverless vehicles on public roads and to carry members of the public in those vehicles, but has yet to receive a permit with the California Public Utilities Commission to charge for those rides. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) last month suspended Cruise's permits for autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing. Cruise subsequently announced a "pause" of all of its driverless operations in the US, which includes San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, and Miami.

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People who are eligible to ride in the Cruise robotaxis during the day, and in other parts of the city, are not charged a fee. They include what Cruise calls a "power user" cohort of riders, and "Cruisers" who are employees of the company. The startup's service will likely use modified Chevrolet Bolt EVs rolling off the same line in Michigan as the regular Bolt EV. GM has been building them at Lake Orion since 2017, adding the hardware and software that converts these cars from regular EVs to vehicles capable of running Cruise's autonomous development kit. Just months ago, Cruise autonomous cars like this one roamed the streets of San Francisco.

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Major AV operators are slashing costs, laying off staff, and some have even closed altogether. That lack of control has unnerved city officials, especially as driverless cars created by Cruise and Waymo have become ubiquitous in San Francisco. The cars have caused major headaches in the city, as they have disrupted first responders on numerous occasions, from rolling into scenes cordoned off by caution tape to once colliding with a firetruck on its way to an emergency scene. City leaders attempted to halt the expansion by highlighting these incidents, but were ultimately unsuccessful. California Assembly member Phil Ting (D), whose district includes San Francisco, said the DMV did “the right thing” by suspending the permits when it learned the full extent of the crash. While state legislators are grappling with how to control this rapidly developing industry, he said the DMV already has a rigorous permit approval process for autonomous vehicles.

The news of Cruise’s public demonstrations of its driverless vehicles has triggered the remaining $1.35 billion from SoftBank, as part of a $2.25 billion investment commitment first announced in 2018. “When SoftBank first invested in Cruise in 2018, they made an initial $900 million investment and committed to investing this additional $1.35 billion when Cruise is ready for commercial deployment, which we have now demonstrated,” Cruise said. Barra and other proponents of autonomous vehicles have consistently touted that self-driving cars have the ability to significantly reduce crashes and roadway fatalities, while also providing transportation for those who may not be able to drive themselves.

I have been with PCMag for more than 10 years, and in that time have written more than 6,000 articles and reviews for the site. I previously served as an analyst focused on smart home and wearable devices, and before that I was a reporter covering consumer tech news. I'm also a yoga instructor, and have been actively teaching group and private classes for nearly a decade. Cruise has stated its goal of reaching $1 billion in revenue by 2025, a target that Vogt said the company is on track to hit and one that might even help Cruise finally break even. That is, if Cruise can start mass-producing its cheaper Origin vehicles, scale to new markets, and operate more vehicles at more hours of the day.

"We intend to invest significantly to further grow the talent base and capabilities already established by the Cruise team." 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. Cruise Automation announced on Tuesday that it has received an equity investment of $1.15 billion. This investment has boosted Cruise's valuation to $19 billion, and it's raised $7.25 billion in capital since its founding in 2013. Previously, city officials in Cruise’s hometown, San Francisco, had complained that the company had operated with arrogance – seemingly expecting municipal agencies to bend to its will.

This is just one example of how difficult it is to get an accurate picture of the performance of driverless cars. Last month, Barra forced out Cruise CEO Dan Ammann over disagreements on the direction of the company. According to Bloomberg, Barra was pushing to use Cruise’s technology to power luxury self-driving Cadillacs that could be sold to customers.

Much of Cruise’s ability to score regulatory approval will depend on how the company answers questions regarding the safety of its vehicles that are already on the road. Cruise first unveiled its Origin AV — built for both autonomous ride-hail and delivery — in early 2020. The GM-backed company has promised to put “tens of thousands” of Origins on streets in major U.S. cities over the next few years, but its ability to begin mass production has been hampered by lengthy regulatory processes. On Saturday, one day before resigning, Vogt reportedly apologized to staff in an email.