Driverless car company Cruise suspends operations in Austin, nationwide

Table Of Content

• Cruise Car®
• The GM-backed company is one of the first to launch Level 4 vehicles in a dense, complex urban setting
• Scout Motors wants to put the ‘mechanical’ back into electric trucks
• Who can ride.
• Commercial Accounts
• About Cruise Car®
• It's easy to bash tech, but I've started taking robotaxis — and they're awesome
• Building the Most Advanced AV

Not-car inventions that seriously changed how we travel, in other words. Cruise says it wants to “move beyond the car,” but I’m not convinced the absence of certain controls negates its inherent car-ness. As Vogt points out, it occupies the same amount of space as an SUV, and Cruise claims it can travel at normal city speeds. It is a car-like shape and does car-type things, like traveling down a road with people in it. And if there isn’t another good name for it — “the property” notwithstanding — then “car” will have to do.

Cruise Car®

The morning after the collision, Cruise showed The Post and other media outlets footage captured by the driverless vehicle. In the video shared via Zoom, the driverless vehicle appeared to brake as soon as it made impact with the woman. Self-driving car company Cruise has suspended operations nationwide, including in Austin. Driverless cars run by Cruise, which is owned by GM, and Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, have been involved in numerous mishaps in the city over the past several months. They've run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths. I have so many more questions — about the sensor suite, the business model, the testing (if any) that Cruise has conducted — but I’m informed that our time is done.

The GM-backed company is one of the first to launch Level 4 vehicles in a dense, complex urban setting

At the federal level, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gathers mostly self-reported crash data from companies. In California, the DMV issues permits for testing and deployment, and the CPUC regulates commercial passenger service programs. In 2017, Cruise was conducting testing on public roads with Cruise AVs in San Francisco, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the metropolitan Detroit area.

Scout Motors wants to put the ‘mechanical’ back into electric trucks

Thousands of Cruise Cars are in use at federal government properties, military bases worldwide, municipalities, universities and resorts nationwide and in over 40 countries. Cruise ridehail services are not available at this time, but you can join the waitlist to be one of the first. We’re working to bring new transportation options that work for you and your community. But unlike with other Big New Tech innovations I've seen in the past — anyone still have a 3D TV in their living room?

Who can ride.

Ed Walters, who teaches autonomous vehicle law at Georgetown University, said that driverless technology is critical for a future with fewer road fatalities because robots don’t drive drunk or get distracted. But, he said, this accident shows that Cruise was not “quite ready for testing” in such a dense urban area. Technological issues aside, what really put Cruise in hot water late last year was its response to the incident.

I think the people behind the tech will figure out its possibilities, its limitations, and the places it does and doesn't make sense. Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, has a couple hundred self-driving cars roaming around San Francisco, and access is still limited there via a waiting list, as well as by geography. You can't get a Waymo to pick you up at San Francisco International Airport, for instance, or take you across the Bay Bridge to Oakland. Which is exactly how I felt after my last trip to San Francisco, when I took several rides in Waymo's robotaxis. The human-driven car fled the scene, while the Cruise remained until officials arrived. Prior to that incident, Cruise had been announcing launches in new cities — including Dallas, Houston and Miami — at a startling pace.

Date set for Mentor Cruise-In - News-Herald

Date set for Mentor Cruise-In.

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Experts estimate that each self-driving car could cost upward of $300,000-$400,000, when taking into account the expensive sensors and computing software needed to allow the vehicles to drive themselves. Recouping those costs will be enormously challenging, and Cruise is trying to address that by building a car with more staying power than most personally owned vehicles. Inside are two bench seats facing each other, a pair of screens on either end... The absence of all the stuff you expect to see when climbing into a vehicle is jarring.

According to the DMV, Cruise can only test five driverless vehicles “on specified streets within San Francisco.” The vehicles are not allowed to exceed 30 mph, and can’t operate during heavy fog or heavy rain. And it's reasonable to have concerns about this tech as it rolls out. Waymo's rival Cruise halted its service last fall after a slew of incidents, including a grisly one where a self-driving Cruise dragged a pedestrian who had been hit by a human-driven car.

Building the Most Advanced AV

The move comes after one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in downtown San Francisco earlier this month. The incident involved a woman who was first hit by a human driver and then thrown onto the road in front of a Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle braked but then continued to roll over the pedestrian, pulling her forward, then coming to a final stop on top of her. California has ordered the company Cruise to immediately stop operations of its driverless cars in the state. The Department of Motor Vehicles said on Tuesday that it was issuing the indefinite suspension because of safety issues with the vehicles. Cruise was approved to test fully driverless cars (also called Level 4 in industry parlance) in California on October 15th.

NHTSA opened an investigation on 16 October into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians. The complaints involved vehicles operating autonomously and “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles”, the agency said. In California alone, more than 40 companies — ranging from young start-ups to tech giants — have permits to test their self-driving cars in San Francisco, according to the DMV.

Critics accused the company of expanding too fast and cutting corners on safety. Austin City Council member Paige Ellis, who chairs the city’s mobility committee, said Austinites had complained the city wasn’t doing enough to vet Cruise. The city is limited in its ability to regulate self-driving cars, she said. The not-a-car sits on the gleaming black stage surrounded by a halo of light. It’s orange and black and white, and roughly the same size as a crossover SUV, but somehow looks much larger from the outside.

By Andrew J. Hawkins, transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation.

Sensors can see 360 degrees, hundreds of feet ahead, and around that double-parked car. Cruise cars make sense of this data in a split second, tracking every important object in view. Cruise rebuts the DMV’s account, saying “shortly after the incident, our team proactively shared information” with state and federal investigators. Now Cruise appears to be going back to basics, a sharp pivot away from the aggressive growth strategy the company has been pursuing for the last few years.

And it will most likely need another exemption before the Origin is allowed to hit the road, too. Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide.

Cruise, the self-driving car company affiliated with General Motors and Honda, is testing fully driverless cars, without a human safety driver behind the steering wheel, in San Francisco. The company is among the first to test its driverless vehicles in a dense, complex urban environment. The 2 October crash prompted Cruise to suspend driverless operations nationwide after California regulators found that its cars posed a danger to public safety. The state’s department of motor vehicles revoked the license for Cruise, which was transporting passengers without human drivers throughout San Francisco. There are few clear federal regulations that set rules for how autonomous vehicles must function, and what standards they must meet before they are tested on public roads.

According to a Washington Post analysis of the data, the companies collectively report millions of miles on public roads every year, along with hundreds of mostly minor accidents. “We have decided to proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust,” the email said. The DMV originally gave Cruise a permit for 300 driverless vehicles in San Francisco, but it cut that number in half after one of its cars collided with a firetruck in August. Even so, Cruise isn’t the first company to build and test a self-driving car without traditional controls.