Waymo's Self-Driving Robotaxis Are Awesome Here's How.
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In October 2018, Honda announced its plan to invest $2.75 billion in Cruise over 12 years. The company has also raised money from Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund and T. By Andrew J. Hawkins, transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation.
Who can ride.
Cruise used all-electric Chevy Bolt vehicles, which have been specifically manufactured to support its self-driving system, in its robotaxi fleet. The company intended to shift toward a custom-built autonomous vehicle called the Origin. 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.
Technology
It requires the world's best talent to tackle the biggest challenge of our time. GM recently paused production of the Origin, a fully autonomous van designed for Cruise to carry multiple passengers. The company is expected to resume production at a Detroit-area factory once Cruise resumes autonomous ride-hailing. Or maybe it's simply for people who would rather not interact with another human when they're in a taxi.
Cruise (autonomous vehicle)
One Waymo study says it has an 85% reduction in injury-causing collisions and a Cruise study says it has a 74% reduction. On the night of October 2, one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in San Francisco leaving her critically injured and fighting for her life. The redeployed vehicles will not operate as they previously did — as robotaxis — but will "create maps and gather road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix," the company said. In October 2023, we paused operations of our fleet to focus on rebuilding trust with regulators and the communities we serve, and to redesign our approach to safety. We’ve made significant progress, guided by new company leadership, recommendations from third-party experts, and a focus on a close partnership with the communities in which our vehicles operate. NHTSA opened an investigation on 16 October into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians.
Exclusive look at Cruise’s first driverless car without a steering wheel or pedals
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. General Motors’ Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post. The cars will be in “manual mode,” so they won’t be driving themselves.
What’s special is the full package of programs designed to put you in control of your career, health, and happiness—whether working at the office or from home. G.M.’s chief financial officer, Paul Jacobson, said spending at Cruise would fall by “hundreds of millions of dollars” in 2024, and would probably fall further as the company reviewed the division’s operations. Nearly a dozen other executives stepped down and Cruise announced it was laying off nearly a quarter of its staff.
Business
The company recalled and grounded all of its cars nationwide – nearly 1,000 vehicles. It initiated a third-party safety review of its robotaxis and hired an outside law firm to examine its response to the pedestrian incident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also opened an investigation into Cruise. Cruise says in documents posted by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it already has updated software in test vehicles that are being supervised by human safety drivers. The driverless fleet will get the new software before resuming operations, the company says.
Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars
GM’s self-driving car division is under investigation by DOJ and SEC after pedestrian dragging incident - CNN
GM’s self-driving car division is under investigation by DOJ and SEC after pedestrian dragging incident.
Posted: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide. GM and the Cruise board have been scrambling ever since the October 2 incident put the company in the crosshairs of state, local and federal agencies. Videos of Cruise robotaxis blocking traffic and driving into a construction site were shared on social media. But it was a crash with an emergency response vehicle that began to chip away at the company’s seemingly impenetrable exterior. Despite public angst over autonomous vehicles, California state regulators voted to allow the companies to expand their robotaxi services in August.
Cruise Self-Driving Cars Struggled to Recognize Children - The Intercept
Cruise Self-Driving Cars Struggled to Recognize Children.
Posted: Mon, 06 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
An activist group called Safe Street Rebel has been cataloging the incidents, which now clock in at more than 500. The group figured out that if they put orange traffic cones on the hoods of driverless cars, they would render the vehicles immobile. So, they started going out at night to "cone" as many cars as possible as a form of protest.
She added that the company's approach is "with safety as our north star." GM's spokesperson says it remains committed to Cruise "as they refocus on trust, accountability and transparency." The October incident wasn’t the first time Cruise’s technology has caused problems. Even as Cruise expanded to new cities in the second half of 2023, its robotaxis were routinely malfunctioning in cities like San Francisco and Austin, disrupting the flow of traffic, public transit and first responders. General Motors' Cruise self-driving vehicle unit will redeploy cars on U.S. roadways Tuesday for the first time since October, beginning with a small fleet of human-driven vehicles in Phoenix, the company said.
I have so many more questions — about the sensor suite, the business model, the testing (if any) that Cruise has conducted — but I’m informed that our time is done. The event is being managed by a unionized workforce, and any additional time could cost Cruise an additional $12,000. I thank Vogt for his time and jokingly ask if there’s an “abort” button in the vehicle. I don’t typically hear AV companies talk about “unit economics” and profitability. But that’s going to creep up sooner than a lot of people realize, Vogt says.
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. Cruise, with Honda’s help, designed the interior of the vehicle primarily for shared rides. The screens, one on either side, will display an itinerary for picking up and dropping off each passenger, so riders know what to expect.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration only grants 2,500 petitions a year. 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. 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.
Learn the basics of how a Cruise car navigates city streets safely and efficiently. The DMV and others have accused Cruise of not initially sharing all video footage of the accident, but the robotaxi operator pushed back – saying it disclosed the full video to state and federal officials. Like using it for food delivery — which is happening in Phoenix, via Uber Eats. Maybe it's for people who believe a robot is more reliable than a human driver — at least we know a Waymo won't watch TikTok while driving on the highway like a Lyft driver did when I was in their back seat a couple of years ago. You really are in a car, driving around the city, with no one in the driver's seat.
Cruise vehicles with trained safety drivers will be mapping the streets of multiple cities soon, but driverless rides are not available at this time. Before welcoming riders, our operations teams complete a suite of comprehensive safety measures. 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.
The D.M.V. said the company had “misrepresented” its technology and told Cruise to shut down its driverless car operations in the state. To make streets safer, he said in an interview, cities should embrace self-driving cars like those designed by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. They do not get distracted, drowsy or drunk, he said, and being programmed to put safety first meant they could substantially reduce car-related fatalities. The company said in documents posted by US safety regulators on Wednesday that with the updated software, Cruise vehicles will remain stationary should a similar incident occur in the future. Cruise is targeting non-engineering jobs in the layoffs, particularly those people who worked in the field, commercial operations and corporate staffing, according to the email. The company has also ended additional assignments of contingent workers who supported its driverless operations.
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