GM’s Cruise Acquires Autonomous Driving Start-Up Voyage
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General Motors’ subsidiary Cruise has acquired a rival autonomous car start-up called Voyage for an undisclosed price.
Voyage is a San Francisco-based start-up that is working on an autonomous ride-hailing service for retirement communities. Through its acquisition of Voyage, Cruise will receive access to the company’s proprietary Commander self-driving AI system, Shield collision mitigation system and Telessist remote assistance solution. Cruise will also benefit from Voyage’s deep talent pool of engineers and software developers.
Kyle Vogt (Cruise President & CTO), Oliver Cameron (Voyage CEO)
As part of the acquisition, Voyage founder and CEO Oliver Cameron will join cruise as its vice president of product, working alongside Cruise founder and CTO Kyle Vogt and CEO Dan Ammann.
“Voyage’s approach has always been to leverage our limited resources to deliver a product that restores mobility to those who need it most: senior citizens,” the company said in a statement. “We’ve made tremendous progress towards this goal, moving countless senior citizens around their communities. Now at Cruise, we are thrilled to have the substantial resources to eventually serve not just senior citizens, but every possible demographic who stands to benefit from self-driving services.”
While Voyage has experience operating in retirement communities, Cruise does not plan to pursue this side of the business in the immediate future. Cruise spokesman Ray Wert said it will move beyond retirement communities when integrating Voyage’s operations into its own, adding that the strategy of moving senior citizens is “not on our immediate road map.”
Cruise is currently working to develop the Origin robotaxi. The company hopes to eventually launch a fully driverless ride-hailing service with the Origin and compete with established rivals like Uber and Lyft. With a fully driverless ride-hailing vehicle, the operator would not have to fork over a percentage of the profits to a human driver, which could potentially make Cruise more profitable than a traditional ride-hailing company like Uber.
In addition to GM, Cruise is also backed by Honda, Microsoft, Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund and investment management firm T. Rowe Price.
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Remember when Roger Smith did all these crazy acquisitions and almost destroyed GM? Mary Barra should be temporarily stripped of her buying powers until somebody of sound mind can replace her.
This is different for many reasons not the least of which being that Cruise is a joint venture with Honda.
Any idea of the valuation paid by GM for this asset?
Please don’t wait for me to hail a ride in a driverless vehicle!!
(unless it’s pissing down rain and I have no umbrella, maybe)
This a win-win for Voyage, Cruise and everybody. Several days ago in anticipation I wrote the following short piece.
There must be some major synergies for Voyage to join with Cruise, and I believe there is. Both have autonomous vehicle (AV) knowhow and assets that can substantially benefit both for this.
Voyage knows the retirement community market and already operates in it. Cruise has the AV technology that surely can be quickly made to work well for retirement communities everywhere.
Cruise should be manufacturing the Origin by Xmas next year and, most likely, it should be the AV of choice for moving people around gated communities. Should Voyage and Cruise join, getting Origin AVs earlier and in bigger numbers must be a no brainer.
AVs require a better presence. What could be a better early presence than having thousands of AVs moving residents around their communities?
Of course, residents in gated communities need and want to travel beyond their boundary gates. Enabling community AVs to do this for residents would be a huge obvious must do for Voyage and Cruise.