The San Francisco, California-based Cruise Automation, now wholly owned by General Motors, has big plans to expand its workforce in the city. The San Francisco Business Times reports the autonomous technologies company plans to add more than 1,100 employees to its current workforce of around 485. The average salary is expected to hover around $116,000 annually.
State officials were informed of the plans, which includes a $14 million investment into the city, in which the Bay Area city will reward an $8 million tax credit should the plan be approved.
Cruise has been busy working towards a completely autonomous vehicle with General Motors, with fleets of self-driving 2017 Chevrolet Bolts buzzing about the Bay Area. GM and Cruise hope to have a fleet of autonomous vehicles ready for ride-sharing purposes sooner rather than later.
An autonomous Bolt EV tests in San Francisco.
“We’ve had a plan in place for a while and it’s going according to schedule. From what I can tell it’s much faster and going to happen much sooner than most people in the industry think,” Kyle Vogt, founder of Cruise Automation, said in an interview last month. “We’re planning to deploy in a rideshare environment, and very quickly.”
Comment
More autonomous projects will get the job done faster and maybe better. But I do expect GM to design and build a new Bolt EV model that integrates all those roof devices into the bod itself. Ford has a better idea with their autonomous Fusion, and has integrated the LIDAR into the “A” pillars and the cameras into the roof rails. GM must do a similar job.