Cruise voluntarily suspended the transportation of passengers for money throughout the United States shortly after the incident with a hit-and-run in California, and its license was revoked in the state itself. Cruise was able to resume test rides with insured drivers behind the wheel in Arizona, and now plans to return to commercial operations next year – Reuters claims that Cruise and Uber have agreed to integrate their services.
Image Source: Cruise
October 2, 2023 was definitely a “dark day” in the history of Cruise, because on that day in San Francisco, one of the company’s self-driving taxi prototypes killed a woman and was hit by another car. This incident cost Cruise itself the loss of its entire management led by the company’s founders, about $8 million in compensation to the victims, smaller fines, the reduction of a significant part of its staff, as well as the suspension of commercial activities.
With all this, the parent corporation General Motors continues to insist that it will continue to invest in the currently unprofitable Cruise business, although the company still abandoned the idea of producing Origin “robotic shuttles” without a steering wheel and pedals in favor of a more practical adaptation to unmanned transportation of serial Chevrolet electric vehicles Bolt.
Next year, Uber customers will be able to order a self-driving Cruise taxi through the company’s app. Undoubtedly, such integration will be convenient for passengers, since previously Cruise clients were forced to use a separate application, and at certain stages they had to wait a long time for approval of their candidacy to participate in the driverless taxi testing program.
Uber, an information aggregator of taxi services, sold its own business developing unmanned vehicles in 2020, as it generated losses and forced capital to be dispersed into non-core activities. Cruise’s competitor Waymo already uses Uber’s infrastructure to serve its customers. In June of this year, Uber recorded a six-fold increase in the number of trips made by customers using unmanned taxis compared to the same month last year.