The end of Cruise marks the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles

After eight years and $10 billion, GM has decided pull the plug On his grand robotaxi experiment.

The automaker's CEO Mary Barra made the surprise announcement late Tuesday, arguing that the shared autonomous mobility service was never actually in its “core business.” it was very expensive And it had to overcome a lot of regulatory hurdles to make it a viable revenue source. Instead, GM will turn to “privately owned” driverless cars – because, after all, that's what people really wanted.

“Customers love to drive,” Barra said in a call with investors. “And sometimes they don't like to drive.”

If some of this sounds familiar, Ford made essentially the same decision two years ago when it Withdrawn its funding for Argo AIThe autonomous driving startup was funded since 2017. This was cited as one of the reasons for There is an assumption that partial autonomy – often described as Level 3 or Level 3-plus – will have greater benefits in the near term.

Vehicle manufacturers are benefiting from the robotaxi business. with everyone Money being spent on electric vehiclesThe auto industry has decided to cut its losses on autonomous mobility. Just one transformative, prohibitively expensive, once-in-a-generation change at a time.

“I think it's a recognition that it will take a decade or more for autonomous vehicle technology to provide driverless rides on a national scale,” said Phil Koopman, an AV expert at Carnegie Mellon University. “GM decided that they would prefer to make money by selling private cars while waiting for the technology to mature rather than continue investing billions of dollars in city-by-city robotaxi businesses.”

Certainly, there have been a lot of technological advances. Not long ago, Cruz did driverless cars carrying passengers Throughout San Francisco. The company even said that it was at the peak Getting government approval to deploy it Steering wheel- and paddle-less Origin Shuttle In an effort to move even more people.

But Cruz proceeded too aggressively, and he paid the price. The company had 5 million miles of real-world testing, but embarrassing incidents were beginning to pile up. Its driverless vehicles were blocking traffic or rush into emergency vehicles In San Francisco. The city's fire chief said the vehicles were “not ready for prime time,” citing more than six dozen incidents in which robotaxis interfered with fire trucks.

Cruise was also in trouble behind the scenes. The company's first CEO, Dan Ammann, caught After an argument with Barra over the future direction of the company. Barra thought GM should use Cruise's technology to power everything from luxury self-driving Cadillacs to commercial vans, according to bloombergAmman wanted to get the robotaxi service going before spreading resources to other parts of the company. He also wanted to take Cruz public so he could use his public stock to lure top talent. Barra wanted to keep it in-house, so that GM could eventually profit from it.

Meanwhile, Cruz continued to suffer heavy losses. The robotaxi subsidiary suffered a staggering loss of $3.48 billion in 2023. Kyle Vogt, Ammann's successor as Cruise co-founder and CEO, was under increasing pressure to expand service and bring in more money to help cover losses. Additionally, they were in direct competition with Alphabet's Waymo, which had more vehicles and better technology. And Google's parent company was willing to spend billions of dollars, with no near-term benefits, to win the robotaxi race. As the screws tightened, Vogt publicly drew a line in the sand: Cruz would bring in Revenue exceeding $1 billion by 2025,

Instead, Cruz never reached the 2024 deadline.

It all culminated in an incident on October 7, 2023, when a Cruise vehicle in San Francisco hit and dragged a pedestrian for 20 feet, seriously injuring her. The victim was initially hit by a hit-and-run driver, who launched him into the path of the cruise car,

Cruz told regulators his vehicle hit a pedestrian Major details omitted About the accident. As a result, the California DMV suspended the company's permit to operate self-driving cars in the state, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration And The Securities and Exchange Commission launched a separate investigation. Cruz later agreed to $1.5 million fine,

But more importantly, the incident hurt Cruz's effort win public trustSan Francisco residents were already fed up with how often the company's cars were blocking their intersections and colliding with their emergency vehicles. City dwellers and supporters of car-free transportation were angered by the suggestion that robot cars were not needed to improve road safety, and fewer cars overall. And regulators didn't like being misled about a dangerous incident.

But even after the pedestrian dragging incident, GM is still adamant on Cruze. It wasn't until automakers realized that it had to take It took a $5 billion hit on restructuring of its business in China. That cruise was eventually cut loose.

Ray Wert, Cruz's former communications director, said, “Total ownership of a century-old manufacturing giant controlled by value investors seeking stock buybacks will never succeed.” said on bluesky,

Former CEO Vogt was even more succinct: “If it was unclear before, it's now clear: GM is a bunch of dummies.” he wrote on x,

Cruise out of the picture, Waymo is one of the only ones left The goal is to prove that robotaxis can work in the real world. (Amazon's Zoox and Hyundai's Motion are also still in the game, though far behind Waymo.) Tesla is also making its own efforts. robotaxi projectAbout which it claims that it will be launched in 2026.

Meanwhile, GM will be tackling a risky new experiment: personally owned autonomous vehiclesGM knows how to sell cars to people, and the company already has a hands-free highway driving feature called Super Cruise. Why not take advantage of Cruise's fully autonomous technology to make Super Cruise even better?

GM may have Eliminated its “Ultra Cruise” branding To develop a partially autonomous system that covers “95 percent” of driving scenarios, but it still thinks people will want their own fully autonomous car – on their own terms.

“I think the application of what the customer wants in a privately owned vehicle is very different,” Barra said Tuesday. “But I also think… there are a lot of similarities [with Cruise’s technology]How seamlessly it moves back and forth, I think it's something different in a personal autonomous vehicle.

Driver-assistance technologies, especially so-called Level 3 systems, carry risks of their own. There have been studies that show that the disconnect between a partially automated system and a human driver can be particularly dangerous.

When people are deprived of driving for a long period of time, they may overreact when suddenly taking control in an emergency. They may over-correct steering, brake too hard, or be unable to react correctly because they are not paying attention. And those actions could create a domino effect that has the potential to be dangerous – perhaps even deadly.

The security implications are huge, as well as liability concerns. The GM may eventually decide that robotaxis isn't such a bad bet.