Since General Motors acquired the San Francisco self-driving tech developer Cruise in 2016, the Detroit automaker has poured more than $8 billion into creating a robotaxi service. Now GM is turning off the spigot.
On a call with investors today, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the company would no longer invest in Cruise and its robotaxi services. Instead, GM says it will combine Cruise’s efforts on autonomy with its own teams focused on driver assistance features. Eventually, the combined team will build “personal” autonomous vehicles, the chief executive said.
“Given the considerable time and expense required to scale a robotaxi business in an increasingly competitive market, combining forces would be more efficient and therefore consistent with our capital allocation priorities,” Barra said on the call.
In a statement emailed to WIRED, Cruise CEO Marc Whitten said the company and its board is “collaborating closely with GM on next steps.”
Cruise had an uncertain few months. Last fall, the company was operating robotaxi services in San Francisco, Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas, and preparing to launch in more cities. Then, in October 2023, a Cruise vehicle hit a San Francisco pedestrian who had been thrown by a (human) driven vehicle in a hit-and-run. Weeks later, it emerged that Cruise employees hadn’t divulged to regulators that the company’s vehicle had dragged the pedestrian more than 20 feet, seriously injuring them. California officials pulled the company’s permit to operate its autonomous cars in the state, and Cruise halted operations throughout the country.
Cruise never quite recovered from the incident, which critics said pointed to a flawed approach to safety. The robotaxi company has paid millions in fines related to the incident to federal and state authorities. Nine top executives and company founder and CEO Kyle Vogt, and eventually, GM laid off nearly a quarter of Cruise’s employees. Cruise began limited testing in a handful of cities this summer, but never again returned to offering Uber-like service.
Barra told analysts Tuesday that GM found that deploying and maintaining a robotaxi fleet is both too expensive and far away from the manufacturer’s core business of building and selling cars.
“In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies,” Vogt posted on X Tuesday afternoon.
What Comes Next
Cruise technology will now be used to refine the company’s Super Cruise tech, which is designed to perform some “hands free” driving tasks—lane keeping, changing, and emergency braking—on specific highways. Drivers are warned to always stay alert while using Super Cruise, which cannot drive “autonomously.”
Eventually, GM intends to sell “level 4” vehicles to car buyers, which can drive completely autonomously on some but not all roads. “We know people everywhere love to drive their own vehicles, but not in every situation,” Barra told analysts.
General Motors owns 90 percent of Cruise, and says it has reached an agreement with other shareholders to own more than 97 percent of the firm. GM will “restructure and refocus” Cruise as part of the effort, but Barra could not say whether the new arrangement would lead to layoffs.
