GM’s cruise car is back on the way back to three U.S. states, but not for the ride
Cruise robot is Back on the road… OK. Although GM inserted plugins for its self-driving taxi business last year, automakers have been quietly repurposing some of these vehicles as it attempts to develop new driver-assistance technologies.
This week, the Connect found a General Motors Bolted Electric Hatchback on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and later saw similar vehicles on Interstate 880 near Oakland. In each case, the car is powered by humans. However, it holds devices on the roof, such as LiDAR sensors, similar to the setup of the Cruise ride system. The vehicle read “mint” on the hood, but there is no visually obvious cruising brand.
GM spokesman Chaiti Sen confirmed to Wired that the company is indeed “using a limited number of Cruise Bolt vehicles on selected highways in Michigan, Texas and the Bay Area, testing with trained drivers to further develop simulation models and advanced driver assistance systems.” She added: “This is an internal test and does not involve public passengers.”
She said GM removed the orange and white cruise logo from one side of the car after fully owning the unit in February. Sen said the recent event began in Michigan and Texas in February and the San Francisco Bay Area-area in mid-April. Cruise named each car in the fleet, and Sen confirmed that “Minn” has become one of the new active vehicles in the Bay Area.
The test shows for the first time how GM started to bring a second life to fleets of no less than hundreds of cars, while expensive projects were stranded.
General Motors initially acquired a majority stake in San Francisco-based Cruise in 2016 and invested more than $8 billion in the development of the Robotaxi service. The operation started a quick start until October 2023 when a cruiser crashed into a pedestrian hit by a vehicle that had just been driven by a human.
After the incident, Cruise misled state regulators, lost key permits, stopped operations and fired a quarter of workers.
After some attempts to restart the business, General Motors announced in December that it would cancel the experiment altogether. At the time, General Motors CEO Mary Barra told analysts that running the Robotaxi fleet was an expensive jamming car.
However, Cruise’s technology is to help improve the approximately 7-year-old supercruising system found in some GM cars. Its purpose is to help drivers stay in and change lanes, or apply emergency brakes without using both hands.
Several automakers are competing to develop cars to uninstall more and more computer driving tasks. GM claims about 60% of its 360,000 Super Cruise customers use the feature regularly.
In the US, the Robotaxi industry has been dominated by Waymo, although Elon Musk’s Tesla and Amazon’s Zoox are among the people who continue to try to catch up.
GM’s re-use bolts fuse on the San Francisco area roads, and heavy computer-equipped cars have become common in the San Francisco area, roof, back and sides. They include not only companies that test sensors and algorithms, but also providers who map and collect data and hobbyists to try to upgrade their personal rides.
