GM Abandons Cruise Robotaxi Business, Steers Self-Driving Technology Into ADASGM Abandons Cruise Robotaxi Business, Steers Self-Driving Technology Into ADAS

While Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving robotaxi business continues to expand (random horn-honking incidents notwithstanding), Croatian supercar maker Rimac is entering the market and Tesla promises its own driver-free ride-hailing service, General Motors has had enough.

GM’s Cruise robotaxi service was put on hold last year following an accident when a pedestrian who was struck by a human-piloted car was thrown into a Cruise taxi’s path and dragged about 20 feet before the car stopped. The company resumed service in October, but GM has decided that the robotaxi isn’t going to pay off as expected.

Now, GM plans to transfer Cruise’s know-how and some of its employees to work on upgrading the company’s Super Cruise hands-free driver assistance system in its journey to delivering self-driving capability. Killing Cruise will save GM a billion dollars a year, the company predicts.

“GM will no longer fund Cruise’s robotaxi development work given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market,” stated the company’s press release.

Instead, GM will focus the Cruise team’s technology and talent on improving the Super Cruise advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) for customers buying its cars and trucks.  “GM is committed to delivering the best driving experiences to our customers in a disciplined and capital-efficient manner,” said Mary Barra, chair and CEO of GM.

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“As the largest U.S. automotive manufacturer, we’re fully committed to autonomous driving and excited to bring GM customers its benefits – things like enhanced safety, improved traffic flow, increased accessibility, and reduced driver stress,” said Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering.

This announcement follows GM’s revelation that it faces a $5 billion write-down of its Chinese-market business, the $1 billion sale of its share of a Michigan battery manufacturing plant to partner LG Energy System, and the decision to fold its Brightdrop stand-alone commercial electric vehicle subsidiary into the Chevrolet brand.

If this retrenchment seems desperate, former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt seems to agree, based on a post on X calling the decision proof that “In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies.”

But backing away from this expensive distraction from its core manufacturing business could be the smart move for GM, according to Gartner Senior Director Analyst Kevin Mixer. “It does appear that the strategy has become ‘batten down the hatches’ to drive back to the basics of manufacturing consumer vehicles as the industry heads into uncertainties and economic headwinds,” he said.

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Possibly in reference to the battery and commercial EV decisions, Mixer noted GM’s re-thinking of some new businesses in the face of mounting expenses. “Recent business ventures being re-thought for near-term revenue contribution,” he said. “There are few examples of manufacturers successfully managing transportation businesses due to the tension between the business model for making things that you sell for a ‘healthy’ margin and operating that business where you need to buy things at lower price points to be leveraged over a long period of time.”

But the company can legitimately benefit from upgrading its Super Cruise driver assistance system using Cruise technology, said Brad Rosen, COO of vehicle sensor company NODAR. “For sure, society and GM will benefit from the amazing work the team did as they funnel those developments into GM’s passenger vehicle ADAS programs,” he predicted. “Yet, the shuttering of Cruise highlights the difficulties others might have in entering this market,” he cautioned. 

That’s because while Cruise and Waymo have taken cautious approaches to deploying their autonomous vehicles on public roads, Tesla has a reputation for moving fast and breaking things, in Silicon Valley style. “One thing Google’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise have in common is a methodical, meticulous, time-tested approach to perception and sensing, with both utilizing redundant sensing modalities to triple-check that the vehicle is aware of its surroundings,” said Rosen. “And even still, GM had trouble.” 

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“Society stands to benefit greatly from robotaxis in terms of safety, convenience, and cost,” he continued. “Hopefully Tesla learns from GM’s experience and produces robotaxis that far exceed the safety of human drivers, ushering in a new market and benefitting society as a whole.”

And, eventually, those Cruise-upgraded Super Cruise-equipped production vehicles could find their way into existing ride-hailing services like Uber, ultimately fulfilling Cruise’s mission, suggested Bank of America analyst Justin Post. That is, if GM can install true SAE Level 4 driver assistance, as seen on the Cruise taxis, to its regular Super Cruise-equipped models, he said.