Issues are getting worse at Cruise, Common Motors’ troubled self-driving taxi subsidiary. After a collection of mishaps in California, the ouster of its founder and CEO and the dismissal of 9 executives, the robotaxi startup can also be shedding 900 workers, or roughly 24% of its workforce, TechCrunch first reported on Thursday.
Nobody is aware of precisely how, when or if Cruise will bounce again after these incidents induced GM to slam the brakes on its robotaxi service. What is evident is that its major rival, Alphabet’s Waymo, is chugging alongside simply nice.
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What garnered far fewer headlines is the truth that Waymo kicked off curbside drop-offs and pick-ups at Phoenix airport terminals as we speak. Beforehand, the startup provided rides to and from airport prepare stations, however not all the best way to the airport itself. That won’t sound like groundbreaking information, nevertheless it nonetheless serves to underscore the vastly divergent paths of the 2 greatest names in autonomous driving within the U.S.
Earlier this yr, each corporations have been providing driverless rides to precise paying clients. They operated in restricted areas, however they’d each made strides in fixing one of many hardest—and doubtlessly most profitable—engineering challenges on the planet. In the present day the race to construct a worthwhile enterprise round self-driving vehicles is extraordinarily lopsided in Waymo’s favor.
Within the remaining stretch of 2023, Cruise has gone by way of government shakeups, a full-on pause to its driverless taxi operations and, now, mass layoffs.
Waymo, in the meantime, retains making progress. In the previous couple of months, it’s launched its driverless taxis to components of Los Angeles for restricted stints, expanded service to all of San Francisco, and added its vehicles to the Uber app in Phoenix. Waymo vehicles have been the topic of criticism, too, usually for blocking site visitors. And the corporate has had layoffs this yr.
Scrutiny of Cruise intensified this yr and got here to a head after one among its autos hit and dragged a pedestrian who was initially struck by a human driver. Within the aftermath, the California Division of Motor Automobiles revoked Cruise’s allow to check driverless vehicles. Its CEO and founder stepped down in November. In one other signal of a bumpy highway forward, GM paused manufacturing of a custom-built taxi for Cruise known as the Origin, Forbes first reported.
In an e-mail to workers, Cruise CTO and President Mo ElShenawy mentioned the layoffs have been vital as the corporate slows its roll on commercialization. The brand new precedence might be security and improved car efficiency, he mentioned, including that engineering roles might be largely unaffected.
Attending to dependable, worthwhile autonomy has taken longer than carmakers and different large gamers within the self-driving automotive business anticipated, resulting in some high-profile exits from the enterprise. Final yr, Ford- and Volkswagen-backed Argo AI shut down. Uber, which had hoped to reap huge earnings by taking the drivers out of its vehicles, deserted its robotaxi venture in 2020.
Cruise plans to relaunch its robotaxi service in a yet-to-be-named metropolis. We’ll have to attend and see if it bounces again stronger and safer than earlier than, or if Waymo runs away with all of it.
Do you will have any details about the layoffs at Cruise, or what is going on on at Waymo as of late? Contact the creator: [email protected].