GM’s Cruise Delivers More Than 2.5 Million Meals In San Francisco
9
Sponsored Links
GM driverless vehicle and robotaxi subsidiary Cruise has now used its autonomous vehicles (AVs) to deliver 2.5 million total meals in San Francisco through its Cruise for Good partnership program.
Cruise is now directly partnering with the San Francisco – Marin Food Bank to bring groceries to adults with disabilities and the elderly who might otherwise have difficulty accessing these services.
Cruise says that as part of its Cruise for Good program it has pledged to use a minimum of one percent of its AV fleet for charitable operations like meal deliveries. While the SF-Marin Food Bank is a major partner, the company is also working with the Replate food rescue nonprofit to deliver meals to needy recipients, using food recovered from restaurants and other businesses.
The subsidiary says using its AVs in conjunction with the nonprofit helps to reduce food waste and get meals to the 30 million Americans said to have insufficient food available. Cruise AVs are involved in the Home-Delivered Groceries program and the food recovery program six days out of each week.
Related to these charitable efforts, Cruise is also using its driverless vehicles in Frisco to provide late-shift service workers with free transport to and from work. The donated rides are handled through another nonprofit partner, SF New Deal.
The disruptions accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic provided the initial catalyst for Cruise to start using its AVs to deliver meals. At that point in time, only prototype driverless vehicles were available, but managed to make approximately 3,700 contactless meal deliveries within the first few months of operation.
The program continued after the main threat of COVID passed, and by March 2022 Cruise had made its two millionth meal delivery. About 80 percent of those deliveries were made in city zip codes with an average income below the federal poverty line, while offsetting 93 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
Cruise is now awaiting regulatory approval from the NHTSA to begin production of its purpose-built Cruise Origin AV, which is expected to sharply reduce the cost per mile of AV operations. Even without the new, more efficient vehicle, Cruise AVs are rackling up 1 million driverless miles monthly, providing robotaxi services in several locations and testing in a number of other cities.
Complaints about Cruise AVs blocking traffic continue to accumulate, but CEO Kyle Vogt believes the criticisms were overblown, asserting no serious injuries have occurred due to the driverless vehicles’ operations and the complaints are “sensationalized.”
Subscribe to GM Authority for more General Motors Cruise news, General Motors technology news, and around-the-clock GM news coverage.
Sponsored Links
That’s nice but they should still be banned from public roads.
Is everybody on the dole?
Maybe, in SanFranfreakshow.
Not exactly a complete delivery. At my house, delivery is to the door. Not the curb.
Good point, how are the elderly home bound people supposed to struggle to the curb with their canes and walkers to get their meals and meds from a driverless car? Then carry it back to the house while leaning on a cane or pushing a walker?
Parking an untended vehicle at the curb waiting for someone to figure out their food or groceries are sitting inside the vehicle is not what I call “delivery”.
Customer service is gone. Go to the store do buy groceries, instead of the store paying someone to checkout and bag the groceries you are expected to do it yourself. Make a doctor’s appoint, instead of being checked in upon arrival by a receptionist you are expected to login to portal via the internet and check yourself in. Order food for delivery, instead of the food being brought to your door, you are expected to go out to the vehicle and get it yourself.
GM Cruise loses hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter. Why in hell this guy who is the ceo of Cruise is spending the shareholders money on meals. First try to get your company profitable before you go to these give aways. Every quarter GM read out the loss its obsorbs from the money burning Cruise. A little common sense goes a long way.
I cant believe the meth and fentanyl homeless addicts didn’t steal it while it was parked on the street . LOL
Thanks for the article! That’s impressive number of deliveries.