GM’s Cruise Aiming To Resume Driverless Rides This Year, Charge Fares In 2025
2Sponsored Links
As GM Authority has closely following for quite some time now, General Motors autonomous driving subsidiary Cruise has been struggling through setback after setback since its October 2023 incident. With supervised rides getting back under way just a few months ago, the robotaxi company is now reportedly targeting a return to driverless rides later this year.
According to a report from Bloomberg, Cruise is hoping to relaunch its fully autonomous driving service by the end of the year, and is optimistic for a resumption of charging fares in early 2025.
“The technology is much more advanced to be better than a role model driver,” GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra remarked in a prepared statement. “I’m very confident as we now have the vehicles operating and we’re on the path very quickly to get back to driverless with much safer technology.”
It’s worth noting that Cruise has no revenue, and has lost nearly $2 billion in the first half of the year.
In other Cruise-related developments, GM Authority recently reported that Barra confirmed that the deployment of the Cruise Origin robotaxi had been indefinitely paused due to regulatory uncertainty and higher per-unit costs, as well as the associated safety-related questions. Of course, The General had been attempting to get around the Origin’s lack of manual steering controls or pedals by seeking an exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). To date, the NHTSA has yet to grant such a request. Moving forward, Cruise will utilize the next-gen Chevy Bolt EV to implement its AV technology.
For his part, Cruise Founder and former CEO Kyle Vogt criticized General Motors over this decision, pointing to the GM EV1 as a prime example of the Detroit-based automaker failing to capitalize on its advantages. Notably, Vogt has since co-founded a new robotics company.
Be sure to subscribe to GM Authority for GM Cruise news, GM AV news, GM EV news, GM business news, and more obsessive-compulsive GM news coverage.
Billions of $$$ to put Taxi, Lyft and Uber drivers out of work.
And the upside is ….. ?
More displaced workers and more dependence on big government of course which is not good. The more automation we have the more people will lose their jobs. It’s all about the bottom line