GM

General Motors’ willingness to lose a ton of money on self-driving cars is coming to an end, with the automaker planning to announce that it will slash spending on Cruise in a call on Wednesday. A pedestrian was seriously injured last month when a Cruise vehicle drug her 20 feet after a hit-and-run crash.

As I wrote last week, GM remained bullish on autonomous driving up until recently, even after its competitors reined in their own spending and scaled back their ambitions. Too bad it took a serious injury for GM to come to the same realization.

His resignation follows an accident where a pedestrian who was struck by another vehicle became trapped underneath a Cruise robotaxi, which dragged her as it attempted to pull over. Rescuers needed to use the jaws of life to free her after Cruise disabled the vehicle.

The company recently announced one of GM’s lawyers would expand his role within Cruise. Then Motherboard reported Cruise’s first email to California’s DMV after the accident didn’t mention the whole dragging part. According to TechCrunch, Cruise engineering exec Mo Elshenawy will take over as president and CTO.

Vice Motherboard reported yesterday that Cruise’s email summary of the accident said the car “hard-braked but was unable to stop” before hitting a pedestrian. But it didn’t mention that the car then pulled over, dragging the person with it.

California’s DMV revoked the company’s self-driving license. Cruise then halted robotaxi operation, later expanded the pause to include supervised and manually-driven Cruise trips for safety review.

Cruise continues to try to clean up the mess from a crash in early October that resulted in a woman being drug 20 feet underneath a driverless car. To hear more about it, you can check out my recent interview with Marketplace’s Matt Levin. We mostly spoke about the piece I wrote about the AV industry’s ongoing trust issues.

BrightDrop, which makes electric delivery vans, fleet management software, and a bunch of other commercial products, spun out of General Motors in early 2021. But now it’s getting spun back in (?) the main company, with GM citing “efficiencies” as the main reason. GM says production of the Zevo electric van will resume in spring 2024.

The news comes as GM and much of the rest of the auto industry has pulled back on some of its more ambitious EV plans in an effort to rein in costs and address softening customer demand.

Cruise’s robotaxis are front and center of the industry’s trust issue after losing their California permit following an incident where a pedestrian ended up stuck underneath one of its cars.

It already halted service nationwide and said it’s installing new updates. Now Cruise has announced it’s taking its cars off of public roads while it undergoes a full safety review. Meanwhile, Cruise board member and GM legal executive VP Craig Glidden is “expanding” his role to lead Cruise’s Legal, Communications, and Finance teams.

 In the coming days, we are also pausing our supervised and manual AV operations in the U.S., affecting roughly 70 vehicles. This orderly pause is a further step to rebuild public trust while we undergo a full safety review. We will continue to operate our vehicles in closed course training environments and maintain an active simulation program in order to stay focused on advancing AV technology.

After producing hundreds of the self-driving vans already, “we did make the decision with GM to pause production of the Origin,” said Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt in leaked audio obtained by Forbes and later confirmed by GM. The decision comes after Cruise recently halted its robotaxi services nationwide. The company is on a trust-building campaign after California suspended Cruise’s operating license, calling autonomous vehicles a public risk.

Houston is the next city in the US to get a robotaxi service, courtesy of Cruise, which just announced the launch today. The driverless vehicles will be available seven days a week from 9PM-6AM in Downtown, Midtown, East Downtown, Montrose, Hyde Park, and River Oaks neighborhoods. Robotaxi companies have been targeting bigger, more populous markets, as the pressure to start bringing in more revenue continues to grow. Waymo just started testing the waters in LA, and now Cruise is going after the fourth biggest city in the US.

California has green-lit 24/7 service expansion of the vehicles in San Francisco, enabling Waymo and Cruise the freedom to operate during daytime hours. Robotaxis are the subject of traffic jam chaos, and one was involved in a crash with an emergency vehicle last week. And they’re expanding to more cities.

The latest episode of Vox’s Today, Explained podcast has Sean Rameswaram hosting Liz Lindqwister, a data journalist for the San Francisco Standard who’s documenting robotaxi expansion — while also using them.

General Motors has made gas-powered vehicles forever, so of course the transition to zero-emission is going about as terribly as can be expected. The latest excuse for its struggles to increase EV production is battery module assembly, GM’s chief financial officer said at a conference.

Last year, GM projected it would build 25,000 Cadillac Lyriqs. The actual number it has delivered so far this year is 2,400 — so less than 10 percent of that original prediction. Not great!