About Cruise Self Driving Car Company Mission

Table Of Content

• Cruise is now testing fully driverless cars in San Francisco
• GM’s Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix — but people are driving them
• Accelerating AV Development
• TechCrunch Mobility: Cruise robotaxis return and Ford’s BlueCruise comes under scrutiny
• Cruise AV
• Scout Motors wants to put the ‘mechanical’ back into electric trucks

But since then, the company has been mired in a lengthy regulatory process before it can begin mass production. For years, driverless car operators have been selling this dream of human-free driving. But the reality is that the cars still need a human eye — and occasionally, a human hand. They may not be controlling the cars from afar — also known as teleoperation, or by some as “joy sticking” — but they are helping the cars make decisions in some capacity.

Cruise is now testing fully driverless cars in San Francisco

Cruise was forced to reduce its fleet size after one of its vehicles collided with a fire truck, injuring a passenger. Cruise received permission in October that year to test fully autonomous vehicles (without a human safety driver) on public roads in California. It was allowed to test five vehicles any time of the day but they could not exceed speed limits of 30 mph or operate during heavy rain or fog.

GM’s Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix — but people are driving them

Cruise will reportedly combine its own software and engineering capabilities with Voyage’s market, which, Bloomberg notes, is well suited for driverless taxis. Within the infotainment center, the driver can choose either “manual” or “automatic” lane change options. When the automatic feature is selected and the ADAS is on, the vehicle will make automatic lane changes without driver input. As the car approached slower traffic, an arrow appeared on the instrument cluster (see photo), the system turned my indicator on and then made the lane change.

Accelerating AV Development

California has the most stringent disclosure rules around AV operation of all the states. Most of the companies that still have cars on the road are testing there. It’s home to Silicon Valley and, therefore, most of the engineering talent. But other states that have a lot of driverless cars, like Arizona and Texas, have virtually no disclosure rules.

TechCrunch Mobility: Cruise robotaxis return and Ford’s BlueCruise comes under scrutiny

The vehicle’s lack of traditional human controls means that Cruise needs an exemption from the federal government’s motor vehicle safety standards, which require vehicles to have a steering wheel and pedals. A human driver (who still hasn’t been apprehended, despite an abundance of video evidence of the incident) committed a crime for which the autonomous vehicle has paradoxically taken most of the blame. But tragically, the incident is now leading to a fuller public understanding of how these vehicles operate.

People are afraid of self-driving cars — can the industry change that? - The Verge

People are afraid of self-driving cars — can the industry change that?.

Posted: Tue, 16 Apr 2024 20:00:00 GMT [source]

Cruise will resume manual driving of its autonomous vehicles to create maps and gather road information in certain cities, starting with Phoenix, the company said Tuesday. The GM subsidiary already had a presence in Phoenix before it pulled its entire U.S.-based fleet last year following an incident in San Francisco that left a pedestrian stuck under and dragged by a Cruise robotaxi. Cruise has not announced when or where it will resume driverless operations. The company’s main operations were historically based in San Francisco, but Cruise lost its permits to operate there following the accident. Cruise began expanding its paid service area in the Phoenix area in August 2023. This is the first time that Cruise has demonstrated its Level 4 capabilities.

Cruise AV

By Andrew J. Hawkins, transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. He then laid out the technology for the “Road to Sim,” which transforms into editable simulation scenarios real events that have been collected by AVs on the road. This ensures that the AV doesn’t regress by testing against scenarios it has already seen. “When we combine a high-fidelity environment with a procedurally generated city, that’s when we unlock the capability to efficiently scale our business to new cities,” said Gandhi. In January, the San Francisco-based startup said Microsoft Corp would join General Motors, Japan's Honda Motor Co Ltd and institutional investors for a combined new equity investment of over $2 billion. "We are focused on our path to commercialization right now but the IPOs happening in the space right now are a great indication of the strength of the industry and the opportunity self-driving presents," a Cruise spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters.

Cruise is relying on simulations not only to prove out its safety case, but also to scale to new cities without having to perform millions of miles of tests in them first. Learn how our data visualization tool shaped the future of autonomous driving. Learn the basics of how a Cruise car navigates city streets safely and efficiently. The announcement comes a week after peer TuSimple revealed plans for an initial public offering (IPO), at a time when self-drive technology is yet to be commercialised.

Self-driving car startup Cruise ran into trouble after pedestrian crash - NPR

Self-driving car startup Cruise ran into trouble after pedestrian crash.

Posted: Sat, 30 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Critics accused the company of expanding too fast and cutting corners on safety. We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities. Waymo has arguably done more than Cruise, reporting crash stats and publishing in-depth analyses on how its cars measure up to human ones. The purpose is to provide some statistical foundation to its core argument that robot-driven cars can operate more safely and predictably than human-driven ones. Test scenarios also include simulating the way other road users react to the AV. Cruise’s system for this is called non-player character (NPC) AI, which is usually a video game term, but in this context, refers to all of the cars and pedestrians in a scene that represent complex multi-agent behaviors.

Maybe a human wouldn’t do it exactly that way, it becomes a national headline,” he said. And if the point of driverless cars is removing humans from the equation to make them cheaper to operate, then the financial impact of keeping all of these people on the payroll starts to add up. One of the questions seems to be whether Cruise withheld key evidence from the DMV. The department claims the company showed video of its car braking hard and stopping but failed to show footage of it dragging the victim as it pulled over to the curb.

As we begin this journey, we look forward to partnering with local communities to jointly achieve our shared mission of making transportation safer for all. 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. Both former employees have filed lawsuits claiming the troubled EV company has been lying about some of the few sales it has announced to date. They also claim founder Jia Yueting has “weaponized” the EV startup’s HR department to retaliate against anyone who speaks up about these alleged misrepresentations. Yoshi Mobility, a Nashville-based startup that developed an app to offer drivers preventative maintenance, virtual vehicle inspections and electric vehicle charging, raised $26 million in a Series C round led by General Motors Ventures. Bridgestone Americas, Universal Motors Agencies and Shikra Limited also participated.