GM’s autonomous vehicle division, Cruise, is now offering fully autonomous rides in the cities of Phoenix and Austin. To celebrate, the company recently posted a short video showing some of the first riders in the new cities.
Clocking in at just over one minute, the video features Cruise riders as they experience the fully autonomous technology firsthand. Unsurprisingly, riders are excited to try the driverless robotaxis, and are impressed by not only the novelty of it all, but also the technology’s ability to navigate the streets of Phoenix and Austin smoothly and comfortably.
“It’s nice to be able to get somewhere and not have to have a driver,” says one rider. “Just to hang out with the people you want to hang out with.”
“You kind of feel like you’re part of the future,” says another rider.
Previously, Cruise was only offering fully driverless rides to the public in San Francisco. However, according to Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt, the company announced plans last September to expand to Austin and Phoenix by the end of the 2022 calendar year. Now, it looks as though those plans have come to fruition.
Cruise is now competing with Waymo, a division of Google, for autonomous rides in Arizona. Looking ahead, Cruise plans to scale up its operations to field thousands of vehicles in additional markets by 2030. Cruise is also seeking to test the fully autonomous Cruise Origin robotaxi on public streets in San Francisco, but must first secure authorization from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test a vehicle without a steering wheel or manual controls. While Cruise has already deployed a fleet of Chevy Bolt EVs retrofitted with fully autonomous technology, Cruise Origin was designed from the ground-up to be driverless.
Cruise recently published its first safety report, marking 500,000 driverless miles without any major incidents. That said, previous reports have come in detailing how Cruise AVs have blocked traffic in San Francisco on numerous occasions, as well as one incident involving a crash with a Toyota Prius that resulted in injuries. The NHTSA recently opened a safety probe into the company.
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Comments
Will definitely be interesting to see how fast they can expand to new areas and markets.
Geeze, they act like they have never took a ride in a car before.
Are passengers allowed to sit in the front? Just curious.