Cruise robotaxi service is quickly expanding
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The company did not disclose how many robotaxis are in use in a typical day or night in San Francisco. “The DMV has provided Cruise with the steps needed to apply to reinstate its suspended permits, which the DMV will not approve until the company has fulfilled the requirements to the department’s satisfaction,” the agency states. The new accessible variant will start closed-course testing next month. Pending regulatory approval, as well as user feedback, the accessible Origin could hit the streets for pilot testing as soon as 2024. The Origin needs an exemption from safety rules from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration so the company can produce more of them. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt recently said that the federal government was expected to make a decision on the Origin very soon.
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GM to cut spending by $1 billion on robotaxi unit Cruise in 2024 - Reuters
GM to cut spending by $1 billion on robotaxi unit Cruise in 2024.
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"The AV detected a collision, bringing the vehicle to a stop; then attempted to pull over to avoid causing further road safety issues, pulling the individual forward approximately 20 feet." Ammann was president of GM and went to Cruise to prepare self-driving technology for commercialization. Since then, he has been expanding the company by hiring more technology experts. Earlier this year, he named former Delta Air Lines Inc. executive Gil West as chief operating officer. This week’s presentation won’t just focus on GM’s plans and technology, the emphasis will be on how the automaker plans to start increasing revenue and profit with new vehicles and business lines.
Who can ride.
Traditional transportation services are notoriously inaccessible and often refuse service to people with disabilities. Some have suggested these problems should have been found in simulation or with safety drivers. Both companies drove billions of miles in simulation and millions with safety drivers, and it’s clear that many of these problems would not become so apparent until the vehicle has to drive entirely on its own.
GM’s Cruise robotaxi service targeted in Justice Department inquiry into San Francisco collision
A running theme was skepticism of big tech companies that don’t have the best interests of the city of San Francisco at heart. Opponents also dismissed the autonomous vehicles as tools of the surveillance state, festooned with cameras and other sensors that could be handed over to law enforcement upon request. Across San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin, where Cruise is currently operating or testing its vehicles, there are around 240 driverless cars that run concurrently at night, with a majority in San Francisco. Last month, one of its driverless Chevy Bolt vehicles collided with a firetruck in the city, leaving one passenger injured.
Texas: Austin, Houston and Dallas
The CEO of self-driving car firm Cruise resigned yesterday following an accident in which a Cruise robotaxi dragged a pedestrian 20 feet. California officials accused Cruise of withholding key information and video after the accident, and the company's self-driving operations are on hold while federal authorities investigate. Rather than selling personal vehicles, many AV developers are now focused on building “robotaxis” that can be hailed like Ubers or Lyfts for autonomous rides in designated areas.
No injuries or property damage occurred as a result, and Cruise sent teams to remove the vehicles. With its permit, Cruise may operate vehicles on public roads in San Francisco between 10 p.m. At a top speed limit of 30 miles per hour and can drive in light rain and light fog. Cruise received permission to test autonomous vehicles on public roads with a safety driver in 2015 and without a driver in October 2020. The timing for the planned announcement on fares makes sense for Cruise. The California Department of Motor Vehicles last week gave the company a permit to charge fees for autonomous vehicle services.
Cruise will resume robotaxi tests after one of its cars ran someone over - The Verge
Cruise will resume robotaxi tests after one of its cars ran someone over.
Posted: Tue, 09 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Though the DMV has, in calling for Cruise to scale back for a short time while they investigate further, followed a good path which will not delay Cruise much if they find their performance acceptable. Indeed, even one who takes a purely utilitarian “greatest good for greatest number” approach to this problem would realize that angering the public can stall a project, erasing that potential for greater good. The report blamed Cruise for having a “myopic focus” on protecting its reputation instead of setting the record straight after management realized regulators hadn’t seen the video of the incident in its entirety. On Saturday, one day before resigning, Vogt reportedly apologized to staff in an email. "As CEO, I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is in today. There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating what has happened. We need to double down on safety, transparency, and community engagement," he wrote in the email quoted by Reuters. Barra’s technology investments have been pushing up GM shares this year.
Rider Review
But there have also been frustrating delays, as companies have prioritized non-wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAV) in their various tests and deployments across the country. A number of companies, including Volkswagen, Waymo, and others, have been working on new designs they say are intended to benefit disabled passengers — but few have shown off an actual product until now. The vehicle is a version of Cruise’s fully driverless, shuttle-sized Origin vehicles, which lack traditional controls like steering wheel and pedals. It has been modified to include a retractable ramp, as well as added space inside and floor clamps for wheelchair users. The vehicle is the product of three years of development and testing between Cruise, GM, and its partners in accessible vehicle design at BraunAbility and Q’Straint.
Furthermore, Cruise employees have 24/7 access to the service throughout the city.In an effort to familiarize autonomous vehicles with the cities of Houston and Dallas, Cruise expanded its robotaxi testing to these locations. However, the focus is currently on acclimating the vehicles to the urban environment rather than offering rides to passengers instantly. Residents can expect to spot Cruise's robotaxis navigating the streets with a safe driver.
Cruise will test its robotaxi fleet with human-driven vehicles in Phoenix before resuming tests in other “select cities,” the company said. Critics say the cars get easily confused by common situations on city streets. Some activists have taken to placing orange cones on the hoods of Cruise’s vehicles in order to disable them as a form of protest. But Vogt said that too much pushback risks stalling important technological advancements that could save lives. Vogt also said the novelty of the technology is why the media covers Cruise’s vehicles differently than they do with human-driven cars. “We’re at a unique moment in time, where anything an AV does, even if it is awkward or something interesting or ...
While no single ride, or even score of rides, can form a judgement that a vehicle is safe—only statistics can do that—a single ride can evidence problems and any problems are a red flag. The company charges for delivery services in Phoenix and gets some licensing revenue from Honda Motor Co. Cruise Chief Executive Officer Dan Ammann is expected to say that the company plans to charge for rides as soon as next year and could expand in 2023 if Cruise gets the green light from California regulators.
Cruise agreed to reduce its fleet by half while the incident was under investigation. The reveal of the newly accessible robotaxi is a major step toward fulfilling the dream of people with vision, hearing, and mobility impairments, who have long held out hope that autonomous vehicles represent a new way of getting around. Technological issues aside, what really put Cruise in hot water late last year was its response to the incident. Regulators accused the company of withholding information about the crash, only sharing that a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian who had been flung into its path after first being struck by a human-driven vehicle. That’s why, when it comes to serious events with irreparable harm, like serious injuries, teams set a much higher bar before they took the safety drivers out. They have worked to do better than the risk levels of average drivers, even though the math says one should start far earlier.
General Motors’ Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post. The cars will be in “manual mode,” so they won’t be driving themselves. Since becoming part of General Motors in March 2016,[17] Cruise has been working on developing software and hardware to make fully autonomous vehicles using modified Chevrolet Bolts. We have temporarily paused driverless service in all markets while we evaluate how to best serve our riders and the communities where we operate. Some who comment on this situation appear to take a position demanding perfection, suggesting that single incidents were “unacceptable.” This stance would forever forbid robocars from the road and thus is not helpful.
They include what Cruise calls a "power user" cohort of riders, and "Cruisers" who are employees of the company. The vehicles will be used to create maps and gather road information without autonomous systems engaged, according to Cruise, including how vehicles react to intersections, construction zones and road signs. Cruise first unveiled the Origin robotaxi in early 2020 as a bus-like vehicle built for the sole purpose of shuttling people around in a city autonomously. But since then, the company has been mired in a lengthy regulatory process before it can begin mass production.
CNN said it was maintaining a fleet of 100 vehicles by September last year and was seeking to add 5,000 more. The move to expand operations to two cities on opposite coasts comes as pressure mounts for the robotaxi company in its hometown of San Francisco. Cruise, along with its competitor Alphabet-owned Waymo, secured permits in mid-August from California regulators to expand their commercial, fully driverless robotaxi services across San Francisco 24/7. Cruise has not announced when or where it will resume driverless operations.
Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo self-driving vehicle unit is collecting fares in the Phoenix area and has a permit to operate autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties, the California DMV said last week. The commissioners urged the companies to address problems raised by San Francisco officials and residents about AVs blocking roads, causing traffic jams, and impeding emergency vehicles. If there are further reports of incidents, the CPUC could vote to limit the number of vehicles allowed on the road or revoke the companies’ permits altogether, Commissioner Darcie Houck said. Should they take over half our driving (as the companies would hope) and do it twice as well in each dimension, they would reduce all incidents, from traffic blockage to fatalities, by 25%. Some people aspire to these technologies driving 10 times better than the average human, and taking over a larger fraction (either by doing all the driving, or being integrated with human driven cars to prevent mistakes by drivers) and so drop things much more.
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