GM's Cruise to relaunch vehicles with human drivers in Phoenix
Table Of Content
Not-car inventions that seriously changed how we travel, in other words. Cruise says it wants to “move beyond the car,” but I’m not convinced the absence of certain controls negates its inherent car-ness. As Vogt points out, it occupies the same amount of space as an SUV, and Cruise claims it can travel at normal city speeds. It is a car-like shape and does car-type things, like traveling down a road with people in it. And if there isn’t another good name for it — “the property” notwithstanding — then “car” will have to do. For example, it doesn’t look like a toaster on wheels, as some autonomous “people movers” tend to do.
Incidents
When asked a hypothetical question about public operations beginning within the next two to three years, Ammann said that "sounds reasonable to me."
Robotaxi testing and permits
The absence of all the stuff you expect to see when climbing into a vehicle is jarring. No steering wheel, no pedals, no gear shift, no cockpit to speak of, no obvious way for a human to take control should anything go wrong. Our goal is to earn trust and build partnerships with the communities such that, ultimately, we resume fully driverless operations in collaboration with a city.
BBC News Services
In the Oct. 2 crash, a vehicle struck a pedestrian and sent her flying into the path of the self-driving Cruise car. The Cruise vehicle then dragged the pedestrian for another 20 feet, causing serious injuries. Cruise lost $3.48 billion in operating costs in 2023 and laid off 24% of its staff.
Creating the AV Ecosystem
Cruise autonomous vehicles sit parked in a lot in June 2023 in San Francisco, Calif. The company's fleet of robotaxis have not been operating for the past few months, after the company's response to a crash in October raised concerns with regulators. Despite public angst over autonomous vehicles, California state regulators voted to allow the companies to expand their robotaxi services in August. That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to the expansion. Cruise has not announced when or where it will resume driverless operations.
One crash set off a new era for self-driving cars in S.F. Here’s a complete look at what happened
Cruise offers to pay $112K in fines over allegations it misled regulators about driverless car - NBC Bay Area
Cruise offers to pay $112K in fines over allegations it misled regulators about driverless car.
Posted: Wed, 07 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
California has ordered the company Cruise to immediately stop operations of its driverless cars in the state. The Department of Motor Vehicles said on Tuesday that it was issuing the indefinite suspension because of safety issues with the vehicles. Remember the unsettling lack of steering wheel, break pedals, and so on? That means the Cruise’s not-car will require an exemption from the federal government’s motor vehicle safety standards. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration only grants 2,500 petitions a year.
Cruise said it is "fully cooperating" with the regulatory and enforcement agencies that have opened the investigations. On Jan. 25, Cruise made public a technical root-cause analysis by Exponent Inc., a Menlo Park-based engineering firm, that offers the most complete picture of the incident. Cruise is trying to recapture some of that early magic with this vehicle. But it’s also attempting to be more pragmatic and attuned to the realities of growing and scaling a real business. Cruise has been working on the design of the Origin for over three years, but Honda’s involvement “super charged” the effort.
The San Francisco-based company, of which GM owns about 80%, said it will "act on all" recommendations and is "fully cooperating" with investigations by state and federal agencies following the Oct. 2 accident. The not-a-car sits on the gleaming black stage surrounded by a halo of light. It’s orange and black and white, and roughly the same size as a crossover SUV, but somehow looks much larger from the outside. There is no obvious front to the vehicle, no hood, no driver or passenger side windows, no side-view mirrors.
Even so, Cruise isn’t the first company to build and test a self-driving car without traditional controls. In December 2016, Google stunned the world when it revealed that it had put a blind man in one of its egg-shaped autonomous test vehicles and sent him out for a short ride around Austin, Texas. Google’s Firefly vehicle, audaciously designed by YooJung Ahn, is widely considered to be the first car tested publicly without a steering wheel or pedals. We’re reintroducing a small fleet of manually-operated vehicles to begin mapping with trained safety drivers behind the wheel. A lot of that is the claim of driverless cars being superhuman when it comes to safety, he says. Cruise will continue its work on driverless cars as a commercial product, says spokesperson Navideh Forghani.
Cruise also hired outside law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to investigate the incident. Seven days after the vote, a Cruise car collided with a fire truck, injuring a passenger. A cascade of events followed that ended with Vogt resigning and GM announcing it was pulling hundreds of millions in funding.
The incident involved a woman who was first hit by a human driver and then thrown onto the road in front of a Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle braked but then continued to roll over the pedestrian, pulling her forward, then coming to a final stop on top of her. The comments come a day after Reuters reported Cruise and rival Waymo have applied for permits needed to eventually start charging for rides and delivery using autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. Neither company revealed when they intend to launch services, according to the report.
Meanwhile, The Intercept reported that Cruise cars had difficulty detecting children, according to internal documents. And The New York Times reported that remote human workers had to intervene to control Cruise's driverless vehicles every 2.5 to five miles. Over the next few weeks, Cruise continued to expand – launching driverless robotaxi rides in Houston. Then, in a surprise announcement at the end of October, the DMV ordered Cruise to immediately stop all operations in California.
GM submitted a petition for permission to deploy a fully driverless Chevy Bolt in 2018, but it has yet to receive a response. And it will most likely need another exemption before the Origin is allowed to hit the road, too. Cruise was expected to launch a ride-hailing service for the public in San Francisco in 2019. It has been operating an employee ride-hailing service with a current fleet of autonomous vehicles in San Francisco for several years. Just last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Cruise over safety concerns. Cruise has begun testing its autonomous vehicles in Nashville, Tennessee; Miami, Florida; and other cities across the US, but San Francisco remains its biggest market.
During our operational pause over the last few months, Cruise maintained ongoing and extensive testing in complex, dynamic simulated environments and on closed courses, enabling continuous retraining and improvement. Now, we are building on that work to create high-quality semantic maps and gather road information to ensure future operations meet elevated safety and performance targets. San Francisco's police and fire departments have also said the cars aren't yet ready for public roads.
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