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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. In 2017, Cruise was conducting testing on public roads with Cruise AVs in San Francisco, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the metropolitan Detroit area. This risk is higher per mile during their current trial phase compared to where it will be in the future when they are deployed. All teams have set a target that their future miles will entail less risk—much less risk—than typical human drivers, when the robotaxis are more mature.
Are Cruise Robotaxis Pushing Too Hard? Or Too Slow?
It is expected that regulators also would not allow it to scale if it doesn’t do this. By replacing fallible drivers with (presumably) far less fallible autonomous vehicles (AVs), we could potentially slash the number of serious accidents on our roads and save countless lives. In the week that followed, Cruise vehicles were involved in a series of incidents, including 10 robotaxis stalling and causing gridlock, a vehicle that drove into wet cement, and a crash with a fire truck that left a passenger injured.
More from this stream Self-driving cars: Google and others map the road to automated vehicles
At some point this transition must be made, both because it is needed for production, and it limits the speed of scaling and makes costs untenable if delayed too long. Cruise had cleared a significant hurdle last August when California regulators approved its request to begin operating its robotaxi service throughout San Francisco at all hours — over the strenuous objections of city officials — only to have it all unravel in early October. Cruise, the self-driving unit under GM, has made its robotaxi service accessible to Android phone users through the development of an Android app, reported first by TechCrunch.
GM’s Cruise robotaxi service targeted in Justice Department inquiry into San Francisco collision
GM’s Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix — but people are driving them - TechCrunch
GM’s Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix — but people are driving them.
Posted: Tue, 09 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
They have also been involved in a number of minor fender benders and rear-end collisions that have some residents worried about escalation as more are deployed. Following the incident, the National Highway Traffic Safety opened a safety investigation to determine whether Cruise’s driverless vehicles pose a risk to pedestrians. The company’s AVs are “encroaching” on pedestrians in crosswalks and elsewhere and could pose a risk to their safety, the agency said in its report. In August, a Cruise robotaxi collided with a fire truck, injuring one passenger. In response, the company reduced the number of vehicles it had deployed by half while the city investigated the incident. And on October 2nd, a hit-and-run in San Francisco launched a pedestrian in front of a driverless Cruise vehicle, trapping her underneath for some time.
Cruise Resumes Robotaxi Tests—Months After Pausing Operations Amid Safety Concerns
Notably, Cruise is calling its approach “multi-generational,” meaning it intends to update the design based on feedback from users. “Designing a self-driving vehicle that accommodates as many wheelchair users as possible is a distinct technical challenge that has never been done before,” the company added. By Andrew J. Hawkins, transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities.
Cruise's announcement comes almost a month after San Francisco officials sent a letter to California regulators, asking them to slow Cruise's (and Waymo's) expansion plans. Officials believe these companies have to significantly improve their technologies before expanding, or else they "could quickly exhaust emergency response resources and could undermine public confidence in all automated driving technology." Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt resigned weeks later, while nine other executives and one-fourth of the company’s workforce were also laid off. Cruise will evaluate its autonomous vehicles without human drivers as part of its next testing phase, the company said. The vehicles—driving on public roads—will be accompanied by a “safety driver” behind the wheel who will monitor the vehicle and take over if needed. The teams also claim that their vehicles already (after millions of miles of operation) have better safety records than the typical human driver.
The revelations about the latest troubles facing Detroit-based GM and San Francisco-based Cruise came in a report reviewing how things were handled after the pedestrian was hurt. GM didn’t release any details about the nature of the Justice Department’s investigation, or of another one by the U.S. A company spokesman would only say GM is cooperating with authorities. "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. 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." If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at [email protected].
Waymo, Cruise and Zoox Inch Forward Ahead of Tesla Joining Robotaxi Race - Bloomberg
Waymo, Cruise and Zoox Inch Forward Ahead of Tesla Joining Robotaxi Race.
Posted: Mon, 15 Apr 2024 11:04:04 GMT [source]
The natural instinct of these companies to not be too transparent is against their interests here—the reality is that keeping the public informed and confident in these vehicles is necessary to not generate the negative attention which leads to investigations like this. Of concern to me have been a number of incidents that appear to fit in a category I might call “that should not happen with pilot-level project.” Incidents will happen, but you want them to be the sort of incidents that you do a pilot project to discover. Each mistake made by these vehicles is generally a good thing—a problem discovered that can now be fixed and won’t be repeated, at least specifically. Some of Cruise’s incidents have raised concern with me, and may have with the DMV.
Even as Cruise expanded to new cities in the second half of 2023, its robotaxis were routinely malfunctioning in cities like San Francisco and Austin, disrupting the flow of traffic, public transit and first responders. A team needs to be credible — there must be a decent case that they will, in the future, produce vehicles which surpass human safety levels to deliver this future dividend. At present, most teams have invested very large amounts and their success depends on pulling this off, so their financial interests are aligned with the public interest. As long as those interests can be aligned, good results are more likely. The DMV action came three weeks after a Cruise vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco.
"For example," Elshenawy wrote in a blog post, "stop sign blow-throughs are 46x times more frequent in San Francisco than in suburban areas." The company currently offers a free driverless service in downtown and central Austin, including the University of Texas campus, from 9 p.m. The company said in March it would begin testing its Origins in the city within the coming weeks but has not confirmed if it has done so. Cruise first soft-launched its robotaxi service in Chandler, a city southeast of Phoenix, in December 2022.
That means Cruise can operate delivery services for a fee using its self-driving cars without a safety driver. All autonomous vehicle operators need approval from the Public Utility Commission to charge passengers for rides in the state. Fire delays (and interference at fire scenes) are a more challenging problem. The fire department, at the CPUC hearings, reminded the commission that in the wrong circumstances, a fire can grow very quickly in a minute or two, and as such a few minutes delay can have extreme results. At the same time, every emergency vehicle encounters a few minutes of delay on our crowded streets — human drivers are far from perfect at yielding as they should and crowded streets may simply not have a path. Those minutes of delay don’t automatically end in tragedy, but they do create a risk of it.
After paring the size of the core auto business overseas, Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra will lay out a road to growth. Cruise, in which GM has a majority stake, hopes to start charging for rides next year with a modified version of the Chevrolet Bolt electric car. Ammann is expected to say that if California Public Utility Commission approvals are obtained, the company could start offering shared ride services in 2023 with its Origin autonomous shuttle. It will be built alongside the Hummer EV and electric Chevrolet Silverado pickup in GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant. Last week, Cruise finished its preliminary testing of driverless cars in Charlotte and began initial tests in Raleigh. 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.
At launch, the service area was limited to one corner of San Francisco, but on November 1, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt announced that the company was ready to begin serving nearly the entire city. The company also acquired startup Voyage in March in an effort to bring in tech talent. Part of GM’s investor presentation will show how services like SuperCruise can bring in recurring subscription revenue.
Activist investor Engine No. 1, which has said it invests in companies that have a positive impact on workers, communities and the environment, disclosed Monday that its stake in GM is passive. Vogt said in September at a Goldman Sachs event that Cruise partly chose Japan to test how its autonomous tech does on streets where people drive on the left side of the road. Cruise began mapping Dubai in July 2022 in preparation for a planned launch in 2023.
Every time you drive, you place yourself, and other unwitting people at some amount of mortal risk. This is not minor—driving is by far the riskiest thing most of us do, and the most risk we place on others. We tolerate incredible amounts of this risk, and often for minimal gain. It is well documented how speed creates significant risk on the roads, but almost all of us have done a lot of speeding simply to get to a social event a few minutes or seconds earlier.
They put a particular focus on safety incidents where their vehicle has been at fault, which they report are very, very rare. Charging for self-driving vehicle services would be a significant step for Cruise and other companies that have spent billions trying to get their technology ready and regulatory permission to run cars without a human safety driver. Technological progress and establishing approvals for robotic driving have taken longer than anticipated, making revenue elusive for startups. Cruise had to back off plans to deploy robotaxis in 2019 because it needed more time for performance and safety checks. GM’s regulatory approval likely hinges on how the company responds to questions surrounding the safety of its current crop of autonomous vehicles.
