GM to Stop Robotaxi Development Work and Focus on Super Cruise
General Motors on Tuesday said it will no longer fund Cruise’s robotaxi development work and intends to combine Cruise engineers with its own technical teams
Citing “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” (more than $10 billion have been poured into Cruise since 2016), GM will prioritize the development of advanced driver assistance systems in personal vehicles, building on the progress of Super Cruise.
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“GM is committed to delivering the best driving experiences to our customers in a disciplined and capital efficient manner,” GM chair and CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. “Cruise has been an early innovator in autonomy, and the deeper integration of our teams, paired with GM’s strong brands, scale, and manufacturing strength, will help advance our vision for the future of transportation.”
Her colleague Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering, added that GM remains “fully committed to autonomous driving and excited to bring GM customers its benefits—things like enhanced safety, improved traffic flow, increased accessibility, and reduced driver stress.”
GM, which owns about 90 percent of Cruise, said it has agreements with other shareholders (including Honda) that will raise its ownership to more than 97 percent. The company will pursue the acquisition of the remaining shares. Once the restructuring plan is finalized sometime in the first half of 2025, GM expects to save around $1 billion annually.
A year ago, Cruise was forced to suspend all operations in San Francisco after one of its driverless cars dragged a woman who had first been hit by a hit-and-run driver in the city. It ended up losing its operating permits from regulators, pausing expansions into other states and laying off 900 employees, or a quarter of its workforce. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also handed Cruise a $1.5 million fine.
Super or Ultra?
Super Cruise hands-off, eyes-on driving technology is currently offered on more than 20 vehicle models across GM’s four brands and logging over 16 million kilometres per month. More models will be added to the list in the coming years, and it will be interesting to see how far GM pushes the system.
In October 2021, the automaker announced a new solution called Ultra Cruise allowing people to travel truly hands free across nearly every road including city streets and subdivision streets and paved rural roads in addition to highways, except for some roadwork areas and complex intersections. The system was supposed to launch starting in 2023, but GM changed its plans and stuck with Super Cruise instead.