The Future of GM: Announcement and Decay of the Cruise Autonomous Vehicles in Los Alamos 2022, and the Effects of a Safety Audit
General GM presented a vision for their future two years ago, that included zero crashes, zero traffic, and zero emissions. The future appears further away than it has ever been.
And it wasn’t shy about putting Vogt in the spotlight, either. He usually was invited to speak at investor conferences or appear on earnings calls by GM, as it was clear that the company was invested in Cruise. Barra herself went onstage at CES in 2022 and declared that GM would sell fully autonomous vehicles, powered by Cruise’s technology, to regular people by mid-decade. She staked her own opinion on the startup’s success.
The company subsequently paused its operations nationwide and retained an outside group to perform a safety audit, after recalling all of its vehicles.
Dan Kan, the company’s chief product officer and a co-founder of Cruise, is leaving the company as well, according to a source with knowledge of the events. A company spokesman confirmed the departure.
GM’s Road to Safety and Transparency: The Case Against Self-Driving Cars in the Light of Cruise’s Fallout
Most of the cars have taken back their ambitions. A year ago, Ford and Volkswagen withdrew their funding, which resulted in the company shutting down. Toyota’s vision for a futuristic city teeming with self-driving cars has been significantly delayed. In 2022, AV investments went down nearly 60 percent year over year as startups struggled through layoffs or outright closures.
But Cruise’s struggles are unique to GM. Other car companies have sought to put some distance between themselves and the startups working on self-driving cars. The billions of dollars that General Motor has sunk into technology will eventually result in a safer future and a huge amount of cash for the company.
Rather than sit back and let driverless cars come to them eventually, Barra insisted on GM staying in the driver’s seat. And now it has to deal with the fallout when that company’s “move fast and break things” culture has resulted in a crisis.
Initially, that means taking more of a direct hand in Cruise’s operation. GM General Counsel Craig Glidden will serve as a co-president of Cruise with Mo Elshenawy, who is also a chief technology officer. Former Tesla president Jon McNeill, who’s been a board member at GM for several years, was named vice chairman of the Cruise board alongside Barra.
The other options are available. GM just re-absorbed its electric delivery company BrightDrop, which spun out nearly two years ago. GM could do something similar to Cruise and make sure corners aren’t cut and safety remains paramount.
It’s unclear, but GM has already tightened the reins by signaling that layoffs would be coming. Cruise has already laid off many of the contract workers who do maintenance and fleet operations for the company. But now it seems like Cruise employees are at risk of losing their jobs as well.
The company said that the results of their ongoing reviews will inform further steps as they try to build a better Cruise centered around safety, transparency and trust. “We will continue to advance AV technology in service of our mission to make transportation safer, cleaner and more accessible.”
The deployment of fully self-driving vehicles that carry passengers without Human Drivers could be delayed because of problems at Cruise. It could lead to more federal regulation of vehicles that carry passengers in more cities.
Cruise had been testing 300 robotaxis during the day when it could only give rides for free, and 100 robotaxis at night when it was allowed to charge for rides in less congested parts of San Francisco. Most crashes are caused by inattentive or impaired human drivers.
What Twitch and Amazon Can Learn about the Internet, Its Contributions, and the Impact it Has on Livestreaming Services for Entertainment, Sports and Music
Vogt attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a co-founder of Twitch, an interactive livestreaming service for content including gaming, entertainment, sports and music. Amazon acquired Twitch for about $1 billion in 2014.
“The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we’ve proven there is something far better around the corner,” Vogt wrote in a message to Cruise workers posted on X. He didn’t say anything about the company’s troubles.