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Cruise AV Giving Rides To The Public In San Francisco: Video

General Motors continues to pursue the development of fully autonomous driving technology, with its driverless tech division, Cruise, now deploying fully autonomous Chevy Bolt EVs on the streets of San Francisco. Critically, the public can now take a ride in the new AVs, as seen in the following video.

The video is two minutes long, and features members of the public as they experience a ride in the fully autonomous Chevy Bolt EV. The passengers are located on the rear bench seat as the car drives itself through the San Francisco streets, all without a human pilot onboard.

The passengers can see their route on their smartphone, while the car itself pulls up and drives away without any external inputs. Notably, Cruise maintains multiple autonomous vehicles around the California city, each of which has its own name, such as Matcha, Crepe, Scampi, Flamenco, and Tostada.

“It was pretty surreal to see the car drive up and have no one inside,” said one passenger.

“The car drove better than most of the drivers I’ve been in the back of a car with before,” said another. “And yet there was nobody there.”

Several of the passengers took out there smartphones to snap a few pictures as the autonomous Cruise Bolt EV navigated through the streets. Other passengers were impressed that the vehicle slowed down over speed bumps and deftly maneuvered around parked trucks blocking part of the street.

Check it out for yourself right here:

As GM Authority covered, General Motors CEO Mary Barra also recently took a ride in the Cruise AV, expressing similar amazement over the technology’s ability.

General Motors unveiled the Cruise Origin, its first-ever production-ready autonomous vehicle, back in January of 2020. Cruise Origin will serve as the automaker’s new driverless ride-sharing service. Cruise recently applied for a permit to begin charging passengers for rides in the driverless Bolts plying the roadways of San Francisco.

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Jonathan is an automotive journalist based out of Southern California. He loves anything and everything on four wheels.

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Comments

  1. What a bunch of dopes. I wonder how much gm paid them to act like a fool?

    Reply
  2. “Cruise maintains multiple autonomous vehicles around the California city, each of which has its own name, such as Matcha, Crepe, Scampi, Flamenco, and Tostada.”

    Considering it s a Bolt and the city is San Fran, perhaps names like Matchbox, Vagrant, Junkie, and Toast would be more appropriate.

    Reply
    1. What’s wrong you don’t wanna trust a machine driving a vehicle at high speeds for you? Of course they are safe if politicians and the company executives tell us they are right lol.

      Reply
      1. Yes obey do not question authority your government cares for you they won’t lie to you.

        Reply
  3. I have a huge payday in my future. Once one of these rear ends me cruise will be no more.

    Reply
  4. I support self-driving vehicles, but leaving them unattended is a very bad idea. There was a social experiment where a “robot” hitchhiker asked people to transport it from the East Coast to the West Coast. Not too long after someone broke it. What happens if someone decides to wrestle Cruise for the steering wheel? What if the cars are not clean? People are people. They’re going to do some very weird things. CEOs betting on robot taxis are going to be disappointed. The good news is their misstep will bring us self-driving in our ordinary vehicles at a very affordable price. That I can get behind.

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    1. As long as I still have the ability to drive the car myself.

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      1. Same. I think it could serve as a driving aid for people with disabilities. That would be really useful.

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    2. Call uber

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    3. The thing here is that the car has a record of all riders. You can’t even book it without a verified account. So if any vandalism is done (at least inside the car) there will be a record.

      As for the OUTSIDE of the car, well… But even there, we’d generally have images from cameras on the car.

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      1. But what if five people rode in the drone that day. Which one would you blame? 🤔

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        1. They’ve got in-car video of each trip.

          This isn’t unusual, by the way. Many cities demand in-car video be captured for all cab rides.

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    4. Yea he was called hitchbot and you know what’s sad about it? He traveled across Europe and Asia and was fine but he didn’t last 2 weeks in the USA before some clowns in Philadelphia destroyed him for no reason. It was a super cool experiment he would take pictures every so often to capture his journey, you were suppose to pick him up take him somewhere your house a restaurant just wherever then you would leave him for the next person but of course America destroys him.

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      1. My son was looking forward to hopefully seeing him and asked if we could pick him up if he came to our town but it never made it that far.

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      2. I remember that, it was too funny 🤣…my bad.

        Reply
  5. I have to post two comments: first, somebody had to be first and we know that it wasn’t Tesla. Second, I hope the trolls that always are so negative about everything aren’t looking to make Uber driving your career. Okay, a third comment, this is so cool.

    Reply

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