Last year, Reuters published a report that indicated General Motors‘ Cruise Automation subsidiary was behind schedule to launch its self-driving taxi service. The article said Cruise’s Chevrolet Bolt EV-based prototypes had trouble identifying pedestrians, could not always tell if an object was stationary or moving and did not have the ability to recognize emergency vehicle sirens, among other major issues.
Now another similar report has been published by The Information, a subscription only technology and business publication. The article, entitled ‘Technical Glitches Plague GM’s $19 Billion Self Driving Car Unit’, claims the launch of the Cruise self-driving taxi service is still well behind schedule due to the numerous issues with the Cruise AV platform.
The report says Cruise AV prototypes will turn off suddenly and for unknown reasons. One embarrassing failure of this type came when GM was giving a demonstration ride to Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo. The safety driver had to take over the controls just 20 minutes into the demo ride after the vehicle’s software shut off and the vehicle remained rolling down the road. Eventually, another Cruise AV prototype arrive to finished the demo run. Honda is a major investor in Cruise, having committed $2.75 billion to the company last year.
The Information says Cruise AV prototypes will also become confused by every day driving occurrences, such as steam from vents on the roadway or water splashing up from other cars, frequently perform sudden and aggressive braking maneuvers and sometimes fail to properly yield to traffic. The vehicles also operate at a slow speed relative to a human driver, with your average Cruise AV ride taking approximately 80% longer than normal.
GM’s own internal calculations also indicate that a car with a human driver is about 10 times safer than the current version of its Cruise AV prototype, said The Information.
GM did not provide a comment to The Information for the report.
The automaker recently tempered expectations for its self-driving taxi program, admitting that the first Cruise AV vehicles on public streets will launch with a traditional steering wheel and pedals. It did not say if these vehicles will have safety drivers behind the wheel, but considering all Cruise AV prototypes still do, it seems likely the service will launch with them. It’s still not clear when GM’s commercial self-driving taxi service will launch.
Source: The Information
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Comments
If anyone has seen a GM Cruise vehicle on the road, the car drives like a novice driver as the Cruise vehicle doesn’t move at the speed of traffic and hesitates in making turns or at a 4-way stop as it doesn’t appear to understand it has the right of way; but if the system is autonomous.. the passengers can feel assure they will get to their destination sooner or later.
Is this article a joke? If after spending all this money, this is all GM has, why is the Board, including Mary, still employed? I have been hearing repeatedly on this blog from AV true believers about how good the technology already is. If the info in “The Information” is even close to correct, this appears to me to be a business disaster waiting to happen!
Unrelated, but the XT6 online configurator is now avaliable. A fully loaded XT6 is almost $10k less than the Aviator, which is good to know…
Correction, $20k less.
Thanks for the tip Davis!
Been driving part-time for Uber for last 3 years. There is NO AV even close to being able to handle the thousands of UNIQUE situations I get into on a typical Friday/Saturday night “party” shift with the volume and/or over served riders. Full AV is a fantasy for the next decade at least. I’m bettin the house on it.
Wow, I can’t believe they dumped 19 Billion dollars into this. Imagine the quality of vehicles they’d be churning out if the 19 billion went into the product at the dealerships. The new trucks among other things would be second to none.
Fools and their money are soon parted.
Yes, imagine if they had kept the Volt and Voltec alive, even bringing out new models such as CUVs, etc. And even marketing them…
That sounds like a Mercedes Benz strategy. It’s not good enough for GM’s management.