As recently covered by GM Authority, Cruise Founder Kyle Vogt resigned as the self-driving company’s CEO in response to the increased backlash surrounding an incident where a pedestrian was trapped underneath a Cruise AV unit after being struck by a human-driven vehicle. Now, Cruise Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO) Daniel Kan has also turned in his resignation at the autonomous driving subsidiary.
According to a report from Reuters, Kan announced his decision via Slack – a messaging app. Notably, this development comes just one day after Vogt announced his retirement from the company.
It’s worth noting that no one has yet been named as a replacement for Kan.
Interestingly, General Motors executives – including CEO Mary Barra – did little to alleviate the concern surrounding Cruise. In a meeting earlier this week, The General didn’t address the questions about the self-driving subsidiary’s future, or a controversial plan to halt a share resale program.
As a previously mentioned, the incident where a pedestrian was unintentionally trapped and dragged underneath a Cruise AV has lead to increased scrutiny as of late. While the aforementioned accident took place back in early October 2023, Cruise has since been subject to various repercussions, including an NHTSA investigation and California DMV driverless permit suspension.
Of course, Cruise has taken actions to address this nightmare. All Cruise AV rides – manual and supervised – have been suspended as the company expands investigations into its analysis of the incident, along with a recall to update the collision detection system in its robotaxi units, which now provides provisions in the case of another pedestrian-related incident.
“I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is in today,” Vogt claimed in a statement over the weekend. “There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating what has happened.”
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Comments
All 3 need to go back to Silicon Valley and stick to computers. Looks like Elon should have too.
Another one bites the dust…
Stick a fork in it already. What a waste of resources.
It’s a shame that GM wasted billions on this boondoggle.
Like Saturn, it sounded like a good idea. GM should have cut and run way before this. Saturn was a cheap lesson compared to this.
Getting off the Titanic before ….
End this automated driving fiasco now! This is the kind of stupid crap that happens when a car company isn’t run by car people. A younger version of Bob Lutz needs to be found. There must be someone like that now at GM. Get rid of Mary and give someone else a chance. Female or male doesn’t matter. They need someone that is “car smart”.
Mary is pushing GM in the wrong direction, trying to shove EV’s down throat of consumers who don’t want them. Of course, no matter what happens to GM, Mary has plenty of money to survive on the rest of her life, unlike hourly workers assembling EV vehicles nobody wants.
Two questions. One Why do we need self driving cars ? Two. Why when I agree with a comment and give a thumbs up does this site zero out the results ?
To answer the ‘why’ questions, you need only look as far as Uber. Uber never has turned a profit – until earlier this year. Yet, their market cap is in the $100 billions. By comparison, GMs market cap is less than $40 billion.
GM thought they could build a better mouse trap (imagine the upside of Uber without needing to pay drivers!) and help buoy up the stagnant legacy business. Just like the EV1, maybe the technology isn’t ready yet.
Oh, and I have though several time about what a great technology this would have been when my late mother was too old to be driving, but still active, needs to get to many doctor appointments, etc. Independence for our ever-growing senior population and those with mobility issues. Isn’t that a worthy goal?