🧠 Cruise’s Self-Driving Saga

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Welcome back AI prodigies!

In today’s Sunday Special:

• 🦹‍♂️Villain Origin Story

• 🚙San Francisco Mayhem

• 🏁The Last Straw

• 🙋Now What?

• 🩺Would you ride in a driverless Uber?

Read Time: 5 minutes

🦹‍♂️VILLAIN ORIGIN STORY

Founded in 2013, Cruise initially aimed to allow any car owner to upgrade their vehicle to Level 3 or Level 4 self-driving capabilities. Armed with a high return-on-investment solution for a moonshot problem, they applied to Y Combinator (YC), a world-renowned startup incubator. At YC, Cruise developed RP-1, a highway-only on-demand feature for Audi drivers. Cruise intended for Audi to provide proof-of-concept before expanding to other vehicles, but within a few months, Cruise pivoted. In 2014, solving self-driving in complex urban environments was a more worthy challenge, as it was a precursor to the mass adoption of self-driving technology that Cruise envisioned. Thus, Cruise abandoned RP-1 and began writing software for fully self-driving vehicles.

Following its YC stint, General Motors (GM) acquired Cruise in March 2016 for an undisclosed figure, likely between $500 million and $1 billion. Since becoming part of GM, Cruise has been working on developing software and hardware to make fully autonomous vehicles using modified Chevy Bolts, allegedly America’s most affordable EV.

In September 2021, Cruise received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to provide driverless taxi rides without including safety drivers. And in November 2021, Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt took the first driverless taxi drive in company history. But as Vogt would soon learn, setbacks are just as intrinsic to moonshot projects as small wins.

In February 2022, Cruise began offering invite-only rides to the San Francisco public. The self-driving pioneer monetized the service four months later, receiving California’s first Driverless Deployment Permit. As the first company to offer rides without a driver in a major American city, Cruise was leaps and bounds ahead of Google’s Waymo and Uber’s Aurora.

🚙SAN FRANCISCO MAYHEM

Two months into its new operation, Cruise caused a minor crash during a routine unprotected left turn, despite performing a whopping 123,000 unprotected left turns safely. GM, Cruise’s parent company, said the opposing vehicle was speeding in the wrong lane during the collision. Nevertheless, Cruise recalled and updated software in 80 cars.

In June 2023, an onlooker filmed a video of a Cruise car blocking police from responding to a mass shooting in San Francisco. Cruise denied that the car had blocked the road, stating that emergency response vehicles were "able to proceed around our car.” In fact, the San Francisco Fire Department reported 39 incidents between January and June 2023 where Cruise (and Waymo) robotaxis had blocked first responders.

In August 2023, a fire truck collided with a Cruise car while responding to an emergency call with lights and sirens active. The SF Fire Department later stated that the delay led to a “poor outcome,” and the victim passed away due to her injuries. In response, the California DMV directed Cruise to “immediately reduce its active fleet of operating vehicles by 50% until the investigation is complete and Cruise takes appropriate corrective actions to improve road safety.” By September, Cruise had received several slaps on the wrist from regulators, one serious incident away from severe punishment.

🏁THE LAST STRAW

October 2nd, 2023, will live in self-driving infamy. At approximately 9:30 p.m. local time, a driver struck a pedestrian, flying over the right side of the car into the adjacent lane, where a Cruise autonomous vehicle (AV) nicknamed “Panini” was driving. Operating without a safety driver, Panini dragged them for 20 feet before coming to a stop, pinning the victim on the ground. According to an official Cruise report, the AV had attempted to avoid striking the pedestrian by first swerving to the right, stopping immediately after a collision was detected, and trying to pull over to clear the road. Tragically, the pedestrian was dragged during the pullover attempt, sustaining severe injuries.

Following a thorough investigation, California’s DMV revoked its September 2021 permit. During the indefinite suspension, Cruise will still operate in San Francisco; however, its 950 AVs must keep a safety driver behind the wheel. Regulators did not cite a specific catalyst incident, but October 2nd was not the first pedestrian injury Cruise was involved with. In addition, they charged Cruise with misrepresenting safety data; unfortunately, neither its competitors nor Cruise publicize safety information, so their claims are impossible to refute or validate independently.

🙋NOW WHAT?

Fundamentally, the risk-reward tradeoff of self-driving is no different than any other public policy decision. Regulators will have to determine how many adverse events they are willing to tolerate for the following potential benefits:

• Save tens thousands of lives.

• Unlock billions of hours of productivity.

• Save hundreds of billions of dollars lost to auto accidents.

However, even if companies abide by such regulations and AVs become irrefutably safer than human-operated vehicles, public trust in self-driving is a formidable hurdle. At current innovation trajectories, adoption is inevitable, but the road to self-driving will be bumpy.

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