Cruise, one of the largest companies that provided autonomous taxi services worldwide, will leave the business after more than 10 years of operations. General Motors, which owns the company, has announced that it will stop investing in the project “given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to expand the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.” The subsidiary will be integrated as another division of General Motors and will focus on the development of private autonomous vehicles.
Cruise provided fully autonomous robotaxis services in San Francisco (California), operating without human drivers, as well as in Austin (Texas) and Phoenix (Arizona). However, a serious accident in 2023, in which one of its cars did not detect that it had a person run over under it and dragged him several meters while trying to get out of traffic, caused the suspension of all its activities.
Now General Motors decides to definitively cancel the robotaxis project after having invested more than 10 billion dollars in carrying it out. The multinational, the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States, bought Cruise in 2016 for about $1 billion. The startup reported losses of about 8.2 billion from 2017 to 2023 derived from the expenses of developing and implementing new technologies.
General Motors expects to save about $1 billion a year once the merger is completed in mid-2025, it said in a statement. “Cruise has been an early innovator in autonomy, and the deeper integration of our teams, along with GM’s strong brands, scale and manufacturing capabilities, will help drive our vision for the future of transportation.” says its president.
The exit of Cruise’s business leaves Waymo (owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company) as the only major alternative that will continue to provide robotaxi services. In addition to San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix, Waymo also operates in Los Angeles and has a more diversified business, with several applications for its autonomous technology beyond taxis, such as delivery and logistics.
The rest of the robotaxi projects in the US are in more embryonic phases and only one of them, Motional, owned by Hyundai, provides services open to the public in small areas of Las Vegas. The sector is also awaiting the arrival of Tesla, which has presented a robotaxi prototype and advanced its intention to enter the business, but still does not have any license to operate nor has it begun its testing phase.
Tesla’s proposal is aimed at lowering the costs of producing and operating this type of vehicle, one of the biggest problems facing this business and which has ended up causing the departure of Cruise. Furthermore, and despite the large investment made so far, autonomous systems still have difficulties moving in urban environments and are causing protests from a part of the population of San Francisco, where Waymo and Cruise have been testing for more than 10 years. Also from the fire and police services, which report that vehicles have many problems deciding what to do in emergency situations.
Autonomous taxis also have a presence in China, with Baidu Apollo and Didi Chuxing operating in several cities in the Asian giant. They have large-scale deployments and large operational fleets, but at the moment they have not announced their interest in expanding outside the country.
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