GM’s Cruise Autonomous Vehicles Will Operate In All Of San Francisco By End Of 2022
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GM-owned autonomous driving company Cruise will have test vehicles operating in every part of San Francisco by the end of this year.
In its Q1 2022 earnings report, GM said that Cruise test vehicles are currently operating in 70 percent of San Francisco. It plans to eventually have test vehicles operating in every part of the city, however, claiming in its earnings report that these test vehicles will be capable of travelling on 100 percent of San Francisco roads by the end of 2022.
Chevy Bolt EV-based Cruise development prototype
The automaker’s Chevy Bolt EV-based test vehicles are equipped with cameras, radar and lidar and run on a Cruise-developed autonomous driving software. The geofenced test vehicles operate in predetermined areas of San Francisco, mapping the city’s streets and teaching its artificial intelligence software how to properly navigate busy roads with other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.
Cruise is currently allowing San Francisco residents to sign up to receive complimentary, driverless rides in its Chevy Bolt EV test cars. The automaker described this as a “major milestone,” in Cruise’s end goal of deploying its fully driverless Origin robotaxis on public roads in the United States – a business that it hopes will generate $50 billion in revenue annually by the end of the decade.
The Cruise Origin robotaxi, which debuted back in 2020, will enter production at the GM Factory Zero plant later this year. The Origin will enable Cruise to operate a ride-hailing service akin to Uber or Lyft, however Cruise believes its ride-hailing service will be more profitable than either of those services as it does not have to pay a human driver to operate the vehicle.
GM also acquired SoftBank’s stake in Cruise for $2.1 billion and invested an additional $1.35 billion in the AV subsidiary in Q1, raising its stake in the company from ~60 percent to ~80 percent. Other Cruise investors include Honda, Walmart and the Saudi Vision Fund.
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will they keep poppy in the dark or will she see the light of day?
Lots of manufacturers can make very good, very impressive, electric vehicles.
Currently, and for the foreseeable future, only GM can make driverless vehicles that are ready for the road. This is huge. I believe the San Francisco focus will expand rapidly to include other areas. If the State of California approves Cruise in SF, approval will follow quickly for other major population centers in CA – San Diego, LA, Oakland, San Jose, etc etc. There are lots people in lots of cities in CA that will want AV services. All it takes if for GM to produce the vehicles in volume and that starts later this year. GM also has to have the digitized mapping, but that’s pretty easy.
AV is coming soon, and it will make GM a lot of money. Increasingly capable AV (some limits) in personal vehicles is also coming soon – in the next couple of years. It, too, will make GM a lot of money. The fact they’ll be EV is secondary. The big money will come with the disruptive AV technology that GM is in the lead of producing.
Finally someone recognized this.
Moving to EV in some way is really a defensive move, just to prove that the company will not be irrelevant in the future.
At least initially the margins on the EVs will not be as good as ICE.
AV on the other hand is where the big profits will be made and it’s also recurring regardless of the economic cycle, if it works.
If Cruise proves this works and it can scale, then the whole narrative around GM is going to be completely different.
You couldn’t pay me to go in one of those drones unless it was to cross a parking lot at a mall or stadium. It will only be a matter of time before one of these drones will injure/ maim someone and the lawyers will have a field day.
Message to pedestrians “stay off the sidewalk!”
They already do. The sidewalk’s reserved for homeless encampments, shooting up and pooping.