Autonomous Cars

This NYT dive into Apple’s doomed project shows leadership changes switched focus between autonomy and EVs (and back again) and explains Cook greenlit the project partly to prevent an “exodus” of engineers to Tesla.

Bloomberg reports that Cruise is preparing to resume service on public roads “in the coming weeks” — possibly in Houston and Dallas, where the company previously operated — but with safety drivers in the seats. Service was suspended in October after one of its autonomous cars struck and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco.

Steve Kenner has held safety-related positions at Apple and Uber, as well as autonomous vehicle companies like Aurora, Kodiak Robotics, and Locomation. He’ll be in charge of making sure Cruise adheres to safety standards as it seeks to re-deploy its robotaxis in San Francisco and beyond. The GM-owned company is trying to rebuild its reputation — and get back its operations permit — in the wake of an incident in which a pedestrian was stuck and dragged by one of its autonomous vehicles.

The company logged over 450,000 miles of autonomous driving in California from December 2022 to November 2023, according to reporting from the state’s DMV. As Wired notes, that’s nothing compared to the millions of miles of testing notched by other companies.

According to the report, Cruise dispatched a team of contractors to the scene within 45 minutes of the crash to take pictures and video of the aftermath, some of which included “blood and skin patches on the ground.” What a job that must be!

Gatik’s autonomous box trucks are going to be the first AVs on the road to roll on Goodyear’s ultra-intelligent data-collecting tires. Using its proprietary Sightline tech, the tires can measure their own air pressure, the amount of friction between the rubber and the road surface, the amount of tread that’s left, and the temperature of the air around the tire. This should help improve safety and efficiency, the companies claim.

General Motors filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco last week, accusing it of unfairly taxing it $108 million over a period of seven years, reports Bloomberg.

Reuters reports GM-backed robotaxi startup Cruise told employees:

A pair of stories in The Washington Post today highlighted how little seems to stop Tesla drivers from ignoring company guidance about where and how to use Autopilot. It’s resulted in years of fatal crashes, court cases, scoldings, and investigations, but no impactful regulation.

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.

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.

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.

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.