Sources: GM spent an average of $588M a quarter on Cruise in the past year, up 42% YoY, and staff intervened to assist Cruise's vehicles every 2.5 to five miles
Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.'s expansion plans.
New York Times
Context & Ripple Effects
Cruise had already faced reported software problems and development delays after attracting major investment, as described in earlier reporting on Cruise's operational setbacks. This report adds unusually concrete operating evidence: the service depended on frequent human assistance while GM's quarterly spending rose.
With the fleet idle and Cruise reviewing its response to regulators, the issue is not only autonomous-driving capability but whether the operating model can sustain expansion under scrutiny.
First-order effects
GM is carrying a sharply higher funding burden for a Cruise operation whose cars are inactive, while Cruise must devote management attention to the legal review and regulator relations.
Frequent staff interventions mean Cruise's near-term service is less autonomous in practice than its vehicle deployment suggests, constraining operational efficiency.
Second-order effects
GM faces stronger pressure to reassess Cruise's expansion pace and spending discipline, because human support requirements raise the cost of every deployed vehicle.
Other autonomous-vehicle operators will have added incentive to document safety operations and maintain more cooperative regulator engagement as scrutiny of fleet oversight intensifies.
Third-order effects
If intervention-heavy operations persist, autonomous ride-hailing economics will depend as much on remote-support labor and compliance capacity as on vehicle software—an instance of the spending and intervention data reported for Cruise.
The sector may shift from rapid geographic rollout toward proving repeatable, regulator-accepted operations before scale; the speed of that shift depends on whether operators can reduce intervention rates without new safety issues.
The trend: Autonomous-vehicle deployment is moving from a technology demonstration race toward a test of operational unit economics and regulatory durability.
As I keep saying: Way before I want cars that can drive themselves, I want cars that cannot hit anything. Cruise and its peers are solving the wrong problem. — https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Trust is one of those things that takes a long time to build and just seconds to lose,” Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt told employees this week after pausing operations. Great story on Cruise's self-driving speed bumps by @trippmickle @CadeMetz @itsyiwenlu https://www.nytimes.com/...
Cruise has more capital and labor costs per passenger than any form of public transit! 1 Bus operator transports 60 people, 1 Train operator transports 2000 people, while 1.5 AV operators transport only 4 people AVs aren't a viable transit solution https://www.nytimes.com/... [im…
This is just damning for autonomous vehicle tech & truly a “bad news” story. Things should never have gotten this bad. I sure hope the AV sector does some soul searching. Worry less about skeptics who work for safe streets, more about fixing your tech. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.'s expansion plans.” https://www.nytimes.com/... [image]
Two things on Cruise: When I lived downtown their cars ran in front of my house every ten minutes. I suspect they were juicing their safety / mileage numbers by running the same circuit over and over again. https://www.nytimes.com/...
After one of its driverless taxis hit a woman in San Francisco last month, Cruise idled its fleet. Now it faces angry regulators, anxious employees and skepticism about the viability of its business, report @trippmickle, @CadeMetz and @itsyiwenlu. https://www.nytimes.com/...