While the robotaxi service attempts to regain the public’s faith, General Motors’ Cruise has announced that it is stopping its driverless operations worldwide.
Days after California regulators determined that General Motors’ autonomous vehicle arm, Cruise, posed a risk to public safety, the company is ceasing operations nationally.
This Thursday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles cancelled Cruise’s license. Cruise has just started offering passenger transportation across San Francisco.
U.S. regulators are also looking at Cruise after hearing about possible dangers to passengers and pedestrians.
Cruise posted on Thursday night on X, the former Twitter platform, “We have decided to proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.”
According to Cruise, the decision to halt its autonomous services has nothing to do with any recent on-road mishaps. Cruise’s autonomous cars, or AVs, will continue to operate under human supervision even after California’s permanent ban.
With high expectations for Cruise, General Motors Co. has suffered a serious setback this week. By 2025, the Detroit carmaker had projected that Cruise will bring in $1 billion in revenue annually, a significant increase from the $106 million it brought in the previous year, when it lost almost $2 billion.
In addition, Cruise has tested a robotaxi service in Austin, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
Although the California Department of Motor Vehicles did not provide detailed explanations for suspending Cruise’s license this week, the revocation of his license on Tuesday came after a number of instances that raised questions about the risks and difficulties associated with Cruise’s robotaxis.
A pedestrian who had been struck by another car operated by a human was run over by a Cruise robotaxi earlier this month. When the Cruise car stopped, the pedestrian was trapped beneath one of its tires. Cruise said in a statement that it was still cooperating with the federal and state authorities looking into the accident on October 2 and that its engineers were developing a robotaxis to enhance its ability to respond “to this kind of extremely rare event.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said earlier this month that it was looking into Cruise’s autonomous vehicle division following reports of possible instances in which cars may not have driven with enough caution while approaching pedestrians on roads, including crosswalks.
There have been two instances of pedestrian injuries caused by Cruise cars, according to the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation. It also noted that the total number of instances is unknown and included two more incidents from videos that were uploaded on open websites.
The NHSTA launched a second investigation into claims in December of last year about Cruise’s robotaxis that abruptly stopped moving or ceased stopping too soon, perhaps leaving passengers stranded. The probe was sparked by three rear-end crashes that purportedly occurred after Cruise AVs braked forcefully.
Since starting this investigation, the NHSTA has received five more instances of Cruise AVs unexpectedly breaking with no obstructions in their path, according to a letter dated October 20 that was made public on Thursday. In each case, rear-end incidents were the outcome of AVs working without human oversight.
In a statement provided to The Associated Press on Friday, Cruise representative Hannah Lindow stated, “We appreciate the NHTSA’s inquiries regarding our safety record and operations. “As part of the ongoing investigation process, we have complied with each of their requests to date and will do so going forward.”
Cruise has long argued that in terms of safety, particularly crash rates, its record of driverless miles has excelled that of comparable human drivers.
