General Motors will no longer fund the development of a commercial robotaxi business, and instead will absorb their self-driving car subsidiary Cruise and combine it with the automaker’s own efforts to develop driver assistance features—and eventually fully autonomous personal vehicles. The automaker’s aim is to bring AV technology into millions of GM vehicles, and now they think that’s best done by “incremental delivery of autonomous capabilities”.
The pivot is a remarkable step for the automaker, which acquired the self-driving startup Cruise in March 2016 for a billion dollars. Since then, GM have poured more than $10bn into the company in a bid to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology via a robotaxi business.
GM cited “considerable time and resources” needed to scale the business, and an “increasingly competitive robotaxi market” as reasons for the change; they expect the restructuring to lower spending by over $1bn annually after the proposed plan’s completion, slated for the first half of 2025.
GM will carry on improving their top-rated Super Cruise hands-free driver assistance system. Technology developed by GM and Cruise will be used to develop Super Cruise into a hands-off, eyes-off, L3 system.
