GMs Cruise Halts All US Robotaxi Service After Suspension for Pedestrian Who Was Dragged

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• GM’s Cruise Loses Its Self-Driving License in San Francisco After a Robotaxi Dragged a Person
• GM's Cruise Is The First Driverless Taxi Operating In A Major US City
• How much does it cost
• Man’s arrest for butt injections part of investigation that led to mother-daughter duo’s arrest, prosecutor confirms
• Now in Phoenix

In theory the flag-drop fee compensates for this waiting, as well as the driving to the pick-up point. While fleet managers wish to control costs and not have vehicles sit idle, there are no emotions or boredom to factor into the equation. But the companies defined these freezing incidents differently, and robotaxi critics say they aren’t transparent about where and when their vehicles get stuck.

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Meanwhile, Waymo officially launched paid rides in Los Angeles this week. We previously reported on California regulators’ approval of the Alphabet-owned company to charge for its robotaxi service in the city. The service is starting out small and will build based on demand and performance metrics, a Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch.

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Ammann was president of GM and went to Cruise to prepare self-driving technology for commercialization. Since then, he has been expanding the company by hiring more technology experts. Earlier this year, he named former Delta Air Lines Inc. executive Gil West as chief operating officer.

GM’s Cruise Loses Its Self-Driving License in San Francisco After a Robotaxi Dragged a Person

"The vehicles did not understand that it had become a 4-way stop.  [They] were waiting for the lights to turn green." Last week, Cruise launched its autonomous robo-taxi service with roughly 20 vehicles in Houston. 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.

GM's Cruise Halts All US Robotaxi Service After Suspension for Pedestrian Who Was Dragged - WIRED

GM's Cruise Halts All US Robotaxi Service After Suspension for Pedestrian Who Was Dragged.

Posted: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The human driver of the vehicle that initially struck the woman has not been caught. In a filing this week—more than three weeks after the crash—the California Department of Motor Vehicles said Cruise had not disclosed the “pull over” move that had dragged the victim. The regulator, which oversees driverless vehicle operations in the state, says it only learned of the maneuver when it was alerted by another, unspecified agency. Cruise implores every San Franciscan to sign up on its website to start using and experiencing driverless taxis. The company also encourages users to leave feedback to continuously improve its service.

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Vogt said Cruise has a responsibility to warn government and regulators that its technology is set to disrupt the lives of people who make a living behind the wheel. “Some of that’s beyond the reach of any one individual company,” he said. This week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into the company, following reports of two incidents involving self-driving cars and pedestrians. The business works similarly to other ride-share apps, but instead of a human driver behind the wheel, cars are operated by computers. People in Houston can now use self-driving cars to get rides across the city. The autonomous service recently got started but not without some controversy.

Both companies have continued to spend big on the driverless dream, even as rivals such as Uber and Lyft abandoned self-driving development. General Motors reported earlier this week that it had lost more than $1.9 billion on its Cruise division so far this year. Within the infotainment center, the driver can choose either “manual” or “automatic” lane change options. When the automatic feature is selected and the ADAS is on, the vehicle will make automatic lane changes without driver input. I was driving in the right lane on the highway with ADAS engaged. As the car approached slower traffic, an arrow appeared on the instrument cluster (see photo), the system turned my indicator on and then made the lane change.

It’s not because they need the money — both plan to lose money on their pilot services for some time to come, lots of money. Charging fares allows them to experiment with business models to see what will work in the future. They want to track demand when it’s not free and when the novelty of a “future taxi” has worn off.

Cruise Says Hostility to Regulators Led to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars - The New York Times

Cruise Says Hostility to Regulators Led to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars.

Posted: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Instead they buy or lease the car, fill the tank 1-2 times/week, pay for insurance and maintenance twice/year and make repairs at random. As a result they view actual miles as costing little more than the cent/mile cost of gasoline, or even the 4 cent/mile cost of electricity. Indeed, once a person has bought a car, to not use it is to waste it, the cost of the actual drive is seen as insignificant.

Cruise and Waymo already operate paid, driverless ride-hailing services in metropolitan Phoenix, where the Arizona state government has mostly opted out of regulating autonomous vehicle technology. But California’s reliable weather, populous cities, surplus of tech talent, and first-in-the-nation AV regulations dating back to 2012 make it an attractive challenge for self-driving-car developers. Employees of Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, will be the first to jump inside one of the company’s autonomous vehicles that operate in San Francisco without a human driver in the front seat. Certain members of the public will also be able to ride, but they won’t be charged a fare. Even a taxi-like service, billed by the mile at a low cost that compares to the estimated 50 cents/mile (plus parking) cost of car ownership is not enough.

It will be built alongside the Hummer EV and electric Chevrolet Silverado pickup in GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant. (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co.’s Cruise LLC autonomous vehicle unit will tell investors this week that it sees a path for its ride-hailing business to reach $50 billion in revenue as it ramps up over the next couple of years, people familiar with the matter said. The resolution passed by the commissioners said that the CPUC did not have enough information to conclude that robotaxis have been operating unsafely in the city. It says the commission will push to update the companies’ data collection requirements, including information on unplanned stops and interactions with first responders. As we reported last month, three cruise vehicles stopped and briefly blocked an intersection in Montrose after a thunderstorm knocked out power in the area. Cruise has been feeding data from each drive into a continuous learning machine that creates millions of permutations of real-world scenarios on the road.

Exoes, a French-based startup that developed battery cooling technology for EVs, raised €35 million ($37.5 million) from BpiFrance and Meridiam Green Impact Growth Fund. Waymo has announced similar policies to Cruise, but not yet named the specific numbers, but they are expected to be similar. "It doesn’t take long to relax and realize that you have a [computer] driver that’s taking you where you need to go," said Sola Lawal, General Manager for Cruise Houston.

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’s first human-less deployment comes about a week after GM CEO Mary Barra said the company is confident that Cruise will begin commercial driverless ride-hailing and delivery operations by next year. Cruise has yet to apply for the final permit it needs, which would be from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), to be able to charge for robotaxi services. Until such time, only Cruise employees and non-paying members of the public will be riding around in Sourdough and other human-less AVs. Cruise’s decision shuts down its driverless taxi services offered in Austin and Phoenix, which had continued to operate even after the California suspension.

Since becoming part of General Motors in March 2016,[17] Cruise has been working on developing software and hardware to make fully autonomous vehicles using modified Chevrolet Bolts. "For example," Elshenawy wrote in a blog post, "stop sign blow-throughs are 46x times more frequent in San Francisco than in suburban areas." Forghani, the Cruise spokesperson, says the company has shared video and other information related to the incident with the California DMV and NHTSA officials. “Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the [autonomous vehicle]’s response to this kind of extremely rare event,” she wrote in a statement.