Also today, the California Public Utilities Commission, which initially granted Cruise permission to carry passengers, suspended the company’s permits as it carries out its own investigation of the company, CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper wrote in an email. Passengers will not be able to ride in San Francisco until the permits are reinstated. Cruise has become one of the two most prominent US self-driving projects in recent years, alongside Alphabet’s Waymo.
GM's Cruise plans small relaunch of driverless robotaxis - Reuters.com
GM's Cruise plans small relaunch of driverless robotaxis.
Posted: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
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The driverless Cruise car hit her, stopped, and then tried to pull over, dragging her approximately 20 feet. The keyword here is "major city" as Waymo was the first to offer autonomous vehicles as taxi rides to the public in 2020, albeit, in suburban Chandler, Arizona. Waymo has expanded since, even offering autonomous taxi services in China. The dream of a driverless taxi has now become a reality – at least for General Motors and its autonomous vehicle company, Cruise. In a unanimous vote this week, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has given Cruise the green light to operate in San Francisco. This makes GM and Cruise the only companies to operate commercial driverless ride-hail service in a major US city.
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The vehicle needs a government exemption because it has no steering wheel or manual controls. The company is working toward submitting a permit application with the agency. 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. After paring the size of the core auto business overseas, Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra will lay out a road to growth.
A new way to ride
We have temporarily paused driverless service in all markets while we evaluate how to best serve our riders and the communities where we operate. I’m back in a Mercedes EV, this time a 2024 Mercedes EQE 350 4MATIC. The version I drove came in at $97,615, due to all sorts of options, like a 10-degree rear axle steering system, head-up display, air suspension, AMG exterior and a $1,250 driver-assistance system. The company also acquired startup Voyage in March in an effort to bring in tech talent. Barra’s technology investments have been pushing up GM shares this year. Activist investor Engine No. 1, which has said it invests in companies that have a positive impact on workers, communities and the environment, disclosed Monday that its stake in GM is passive.
In one incident, worried fire personnel broke the windows of a Cruise vehicle in an attempt to prevent it from driving onto an active fire scene. Cruise said earlier this month that it has improved the way its technology responds to emergency vehicles and situations. The true commercial value of a robotaxi business comes when you can convince customers to replace car ownership with your service, or rather a suite of offerings centered around your service. Just being a cheaper Uber is a start, but the taxi ride business is a tiny fraction of the private car business. Of course, you want to replace their car with something better and/or cheaper.
How much does it cost
All this is good, but the real change happens when robotaxis offer what was never possible in both private cars and taxis, including prices no taxi can beat, entirely different styles of pricing and previously impractical modes of service. More reasonably people are enjoying having no pressure to converse with a driver, and the freedom to have private phone conversations and phone calls. This is good, but today it comes with vehicles that are still fairly poor at pick-up and drop-off compared with humans, and which can’t help disabled people get in the car. The presence of a driver can also discourage people making messes or even domestic disputes that get physical, according to some commenters at the recent PUC hearings. Still, in a recent New York Times interview, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said it wasn’t too soon to think about what might happen to the jobs of today’s professional drivers, some of whom asked the CPUC to block robotaxi expansion during comments before the vote.
It was taken in a packed San Francisco hearing room after a marathon six-hour public comment session, over strenuous objections from San Francisco officials and some vocal residents. The robots’ occasional struggles to interpret traffic conditions have in some cases delayed first responders, obstructed public transit, and disrupted construction work. California today cleared all-day paid robotaxi service in San Francisco—with unlimited fleets of self-driving cars. Soon, anyone in the city might be able to hail a driverless car with a few taps of a phone. And San Francisco cab and ride-hail drivers will have new, automated competition.
This can be overridden by holding the steering wheel and keeping it in the lane. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the driver of a Ford Mustang Mach-E who crashed into a stationary car in Texas in February was using the hands-free driver-assistance system known as BlueCruise. This is the first known fatality resulting from a crash involving the use of BlueCruise. The NTSB announcement came a day after the safety board announced it’s probing a second fatal crash near Philadelphia where Ford’s driver-assistance system may have been active.
Ride-hail
The DMV says Cruise will either have to appeal its decision or provide information about how it has addressed its technology’s “deficiencies” in order to win back its permit. The exact date when the driverless taxis will operate wasn't disclosed but there will be 30 all-electric Chevrolet Bolt taxis that will roam San Francisco once the operation commences. Cruise said that it will roll out the fared rides gradually, with the aim to provide the smoothest customer experience possible. The company wants to focus on "delivering a magical and safe service for our riders."
For Cruise and Waymo, the approval was an important step toward turning billions spent chasing a signature dream of the tech industry into a viable business—and to delivering returns to external investors that have backed the projects. General Motors reported $1.9 billion in losses on Cruise in 2022, a jump over the $1.2 billion loss the year before, despite expanding its paid rides program. Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina said in a statement that the company will gradually over the coming weeks invite more than 100,000 people on a waiting list for robotaxi service to ride. Charging for self-driving vehicle services would be a significant step for Cruise and other companies that have spent billions trying to get their technology ready and regulatory permission to run cars without a human safety driver.
GM’s “Cruise” robotaxi unit announced the price they will now charge for robotaxi rides, now that they have received permits to operate commercial service all day in San Francisco. There will be a $5 base fee (”flag drop”) plus 90 cents/mile and 40 cents/minute, plus tax. The 3-1 vote by the California Public Utilities Commission came in response to applications from Cruise, backed by General Motors, and Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet.
Initially, Cruise’s driverless autonomous offering will operate only between 10 p.m. But the limits are part of a plan by regulators and the company to prove out the safety and efficacy of its system before deploying it in more locations at additional times. The new operating window already extends its total active time by 1.5 hours as compared to the free driverless test pilot service it was offering between June of last year and the debut of this paid service. A customer will need an easy and effective way to do that, and right now the companies don’t have any offering. Waymo has permission to operate in Silicon Valley, and Cruise may seek that before too long.
In 2017, Cruise was conducting testing on public roads with Cruise AVs in San Francisco, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the metropolitan Detroit area. California’s regulators shut down Cruise’s robotaxi service in San Francisco earlier this week following an October 2 incident in which a human-driven vehicle collided with a pedestrian, throwing her into the path of Cruise’s driverless vehicle. According to Cruise, citing data from cameras and sensors mounted on its vehicle, the robot car swerved and braked, but still hit the woman.
To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. "Another excellent @Cruise ride. From a hotel to a grocery store and back to the hotel - fully autonomously. If you think the future is not here yet, you’re just yet to try it. Long autonomy. P.S. Tweeting this from an AV." Cruise's path to autonomous driving creates opportunities for increased mobility and independence.
That allows the technology to learn from simulated drives and then apply what it learns in real life. "When you consider our safety record, the gravity of our team’s achievement comes into sharper focus," Elshenawy continued. "To date, riders have taken tens of thousands of rides in Cruise AVs. In the coming years, millions of people will experience this fully driverless future for themselves." Cruise provided additional details of the October 2 collision in a blog post published today.
While it’s good that riders won’t be charged extra because the car still doesn’t handle all roads, the trips will still take longer — sometimes a fair bit longer. Some riders may balk at the delays now that the rides cost as much as a faster ride with a TNC. The rides had to be at night because according to the stipulations of Cruise’s “driverless deployment permit” from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the company can only operate driverless between the hours of 10 p.m. Cruise received the permit in early October, which allows the company to deploy its vehicles without a human onboard, as well as charge fees for delivery services, but crucially not ride-hailing services. California has suspended driverless vehicles operated by the General Motors subsidiary Cruise in the city of San Francisco—just two months after the state began allowing the robotaxis to pick up paying passengers around the clock. The suspension stems from a gruesome incident on October 2 in which a human-driven vehicle hit a female pedestrian and threw her into the path of a Cruise car.
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