The future of autonomous operations at Cruise appears bleak as its primary investor, General Motors (GM), has decided to withdraw financial support for the initiative.
GM, which acquired approximately 90% of Cruise in 2016, made this announcement in a public statement released Tuesday. This decision comes on the heels of a serious incident in October 2023, when one of Cruise’s self-driving vehicles struck a woman after she was pushed into its path by a vehicle operated by a human driver in San Francisco. This tragic event resulted in California regulators suspending Cruise’s testing license for driverless cars statewide, forcing the company to halt operations in the other cities where it operated. By May 2024, it resumed limited testing in Arizona.
GM expressed that it would stop funding the development of Cruise’s robotaxi services due to the extensive time and resources required to scale the business amidst an increasingly competitive landscape in the robotaxi market. The automaker intends to merge the technical teams of Cruise and GM into a unified group focused on facilitating advancements in both autonomous and assisted driving technologies.
“GM is dedicated to providing the best driving experiences for our customers efficiently and responsibly,” said Mary Barra, CEO of GM, in the statement. “Cruise has been an early pioneer in the field of autonomy, and by integrating our teams more closely and leveraging GM’s well-known brands, production capabilities, and scale, we aim to further our vision for the future of transportation.”
Dave Richardson, senior vice president for software and services engineering at GM, emphasized the company’s ongoing commitment to autonomous driving, expressing excitement about bringing benefits such as enhanced safety, improved traffic management, increased access, and reduced stress for drivers.
As of now, Cruise has not publicly responded to GM’s decision regarding funding and its possible impact on their autonomous vehicle testing. Currently, the company’s driverless vehicles are operating on roads in Texas and Arizona, but GM’s announcement may cause Cruise to suspend activities immediately. Digital Trends has reached out to Cruise for a statement and will update the article when a response is received.
This decision by GM underscores the challenges facing the nascent robotaxi sector, which primarily consists of pilot programs. In a comparable move, another major automotive player, Ford, stopped financing autonomous car specialist Argo in 2022. Meanwhile, Waymo, backed by Alphabet, continues to lead the sector with its robotaxi services now being tested in multiple cities, including a recent announcement of an expansion into Miami.
