GM's Cruise inches closer to restarting self-driving taxi fleets, this time in Phoenix
General Motors' self-driving car subsidiary Cruise is inching closer to restarting its driverless robo taxi business after halting all services and recalling its vehicles late last year.
The company said Monday it will begin supervised autonomous driving in Phoenix on Tuesday. The news comes after Cruise announced in April that it would reintroduce a small fleet of human-driven vehicles starting in Phoenix.
Cruise had stopped operations about six months ago after an incident in October in San Francisco, where the company is headquartered. A vehicle hit a pedestrian, pushing her into an oncoming Cruise self-driving car, which then dragged her several feet, leaving the woman critically injured.
GM spokesman Pat Morrissey said the automaker believes Cruise is ready to relaunch because Cruise has been constantly updating its performance, using real road data and simulated scenarios. The company has made ongoing improvements in how the cars maneuver around pedestrians, emergency vehicles and construction areas, he said.
"Safety is the defining principle for everything we do and continues to guide our progress toward resuming driverless operations," Morrissey said. "From comprehensive vehicle management before our AVs depart the garage to continuous driver monitoring and roadworthiness of the vehicle, we deploy rigorous safety procedures, protocols and performance requirements to ensure supervised autonomous operations are safe for operation on public roads."
Morrissey also said having a new chief safety officer is an important step, a role filled by Steve Kenner, who has updated safety procedures, protocols and community relationships. Cruise is following recommendations from third-party experts and building a close partnership with the communities in which it plans to operate.
The company said Monday in a blog post that for the past several weeks Cruise has been mapping and collecting road information in Phoenix with human drivers at the wheel. The next step is to validate the autonomous vehicles' safety and performance. During this phase, the vehicles will drive autonomously with a human safety driver present to take control if needed. Cruise uses modified Chevrolet Bolt electric cars that have steering wheels and brakes.
More: Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama prepare to vote in UAW election
"Supervised autonomous driving is a critical validation phase prior to driverless deployment and builds on our extensive work in simulation, closed-course driving and more than 5 million driverless miles previously driven by our fleet to ensure safe performance on real-world roads and driving scenarios," Morrissey said in an emailed statement. "We’ll begin in a limited area of Phoenix and will gradually expand to Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert and Chandler measured against predetermined safety benchmarks."
A Cruise competitor, Waymo, which is Alphabet's self-driving startup, has been operating and expanding services in Phoenix for several years. It recently began offering driverless rides on freeways in Phoenix.
As the Free Press has reported, GM has invested about $8 billion in Cruise since 2016. Cruise leaders had at one point promised to deliver $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025, but the subsidiary has not made any money yet. Last month, GM CEO Mary Barra reiterated to Wall Street that the relaunch of Cruise safely, "while delivering strong margins and cash flows," is a top priority for GM this year.
More: GM's Cruise offers a settlement to California regulators over pedestrian accident
GM CFO Paul Jacobson has said the company expects to spend $1.7 billion on Cruise operations this year, down slightly from GM’s spend on Cruise in previous years of around $2 billion.
The fallout from that Oct. 2 accident has resulted in regulators suspending Cruise from further operations in San Francisco. That was followed by Cruise opting to suspend all its operations nationwide. Cruise has since fired nine executives and cut about 24% or 900 full-time employees from its workforce. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and co-founder and Chief Product Officer Dan Kan resigned, and Barra said in November that GM will be making "substantially lower spending" on Cruise in 2024 than it did in 2023.
GM leaders remain firm that the automaker still supports Cruise's mission.
Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: GM's Cruise takes another step toward restarting its robotaxis
