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GM Indefinitely Pauses Cruise Origin Robotaxi Production

During General Motors’ Q2 2024 earnings report presentation to shareholders, GM CEO and Chair Mary Barra confirmed that deployment of the fully autonomous Cruise Origin robotaxi has been put on ice indefinitely.

Per Barra, further development of the Origin will be paused in light of regulatory uncertainty and higher per-unit costs. Instead, Cruise will turn to the next-gen Chevy Bolt EV to implement its AV technology.

Photo of Cruise Origin.

“The Cruise team will also simplify their path to scale by focusing their next autonomous vehicle on the next-generation Chevrolet Bolt, instead of the Origin,” GM CEO and Chair Mary Barra noted in a prepared statement. “This addresses the regulatory uncertainty we faced with the Origin because of its unique design. In addition, per-unit costs will be much lower, which will help Cruise optimize its resources.”

Of course, back in March 2023, GM Authority reported that the Cruise Origin’s lack of manual steering controls or pedals, as well as the associated safety-related questions, posed as a potential obstruction to getting approval for use on public roads, thus compelling the Detroit-based automaker to seek an exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving Origin robotaxis every year.

To date, the NHTSA has yet to grant such permission. As such, it appears as though General Motors would rather move forward with the next-gen Bolt EV rather than fight for a regulatory exception.

In other recent Cruise Origin-related developments, GM Authority reported that some units of the purpose-built autonomous vehicle were being stored at the defunct GM Grand Blanc Tooling Center in Michigan. Owing to the way the Origins were piled up against each other, it seemed as though The General was storing the AVs for future use. Now, it’s unclear what GM will elect to do with the vehicles, which don’t include a steering wheel or driver controls.

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As a typical Florida Man, Trey is a certified GM nutjob who's obsessed with anything and everything Corvette-related.

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Comments

  1. To early in the production/acceptance cycle. Who would want to get into a vehicle where you had no means of stopping or steering it should something go wrong? A lot of people/regulators.

    Reply
  2. You do it everyday when you ride with somebody, or did you think you are the only one texting

    Reply
  3. This is a powerful example of how decades of public transportation funding has been wasted.

    Reply
  4. Plant delays, EV battery plant delays, self driving crap blowing up in gm’s face, stock price way down today. How do these people keep their jobs?

    Reply
    1. Imagine how much money gm could make it they had talented car business people in charge.

      Reply
    2. Instead of wasting billions of dollars on things nobody wants, try building competitors for the Ford Bronco and the Jeep Wrangler!

      Reply
  5. All the money wasted should have been directed at all the already existing, mostly automated public transportation systems: trains and subway systems. Maintenance. New lines.

    Also, these cruise robotaxis are not any more automated than the existing trains and subways. There is a human in a chair, starring at a computer screen somewhere in an IT center watching and overriding the cruise robotaxis whenever needed.

    Reply
  6. These don’t have diesels?

    Reply
  7. It’s way more than disappointing to see GM innovation stymied by bureaucratic nonsense.

    Reply
  8. Coming from a company that built similar autonomous shuttles, I remain surprised how GM plowed ahead with production of vehicles that had no neartime chance of FMVSS compliance. Maybe they felt they could bully their way through compliance based on their size and legislative manipulation. Well, it didn’t happen and these things may be deployed as chicken coops.

    Reply
  9. Another incredible waste of resources and talent by GM.
    Add it to the ever-growing pile.

    Reply

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