- Shortly after the CPUC’s favorable ruling, about 10 Cruise AVs blocked streets in the North Beach bar and restaurant district, sitting motionless with flashers blinking for about 15 minutes, according to the Los Angeles Times.
- “The DMV is in contact with Cruise and law enforcement officials to determine the facts and requested Cruise to immediately reduce its active fleet of operating vehicles by 50% until the investigation is complete,” the DMV told Autoweek.
- Cruise’s 3 million miles of testing pale next to Waymo’s 20 million.
Three weeks ago, General Motors’ autonomous-vehicle subsidiary Cruise was on a roll after the California Public Utilities Commission agreed to let the company’s robotaxis, along with Alphabet’s Waymo, charge fares 24/7 in its hometown testbed of San Francisco.
For sure, there had been some high-profile mishaps prior to the CPUC’s ruling, including anonymous prankster-protestor group SafeStreetRebel stopping some AVs in their geo-fenced tracks by “coning” them with pylons.
It is what’s happened since the CPUC’s favorable ruling that has slammed the re-gen brakes—perhaps “lifted accelerator pedal” is more accurate—on Cruise.
The weekend after the CPUC’s ruling, about 10 Cruise AVs blocked two narrow streets in the middle of the North Beach bar and restaurant district, sitting motionless with flashers blinking for about 15 minutes, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Cruise first blamed the mishap on too many cellphone carriers from the nearby Outside Lands music festival, then said it appeared to be intentional pedestrian interference.
Mishaps under Investigation
The next week, another Cruise parked itself in wet cement on a city street. Then, a Cruise robotaxi carrying a passenger collided with a fire truck in a San Francisco intersection.
That Friday, just eight days after the CPUC’s favorable ruling for Cruise and Waymo, Cruise agreed to cut its San Francisco fleet in half while the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles investigates these latest mishaps.
“The DMV is in contact with Cruise and law enforcement officials to determine the facts and requested 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,” a DMV spokesperson said, via email.
“Cruise has agreed to a 50% reduction and will have no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night.”
The DMV granted Cruise and Waymo AV permits in September 2021, a prerequisite for the CPUC to allow the companies to charge fares.
While the state DMV holds up Cruise’s expansion in San Francisco during its investigation, leadership in San Francisco wants to roll back the CPUC’s favorable ruling for Cruise and Waymo.
Local Officials Opposing Unlimited AV Deployment
“The city attorney filed a motion for stay of the CPUC’s decision,” county Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin told Autoweek via email. And this month the city “will be filing a request for rehearing of the CPUC’s decision allowing for the unlimited deployment of AVs by Cruise and Waymo.”
Alphabet’s Waymo One AV service has about 250 Jaguar i-Pace robotaxis based in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area, not all deployed at the same time. As both Cruise and Waymo One deploy electric vehicles for their autonomous taxis, a portion of each must be recharged and cleaned at any given time, and of course their numbers ebb and flow with demand between peak hours.
News reports indicate about 100 Waymo i-Paces were in service at any given time prior to the CPUC’s ruling. Waymo also operates a few hundred robotaxis in Metro Phoenix (the company does not provide an exact number) with plans to soon expand into Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles.
Cruise, which had limited rights to charge for nighttime fares (when there are far less cyclists and pedestrians) prior to the CPUC ruling, also has plans to expand into LA and Austin, as well as Miami.
It opened its fleets to its local employees in 2017 and began charging the public for evening rides in 2022. The CPUC’s ruling allowed Cruise to charge for fares, like Waymo, 24 hours a day, seven days per week.
When Can Cruise Turn a Profit?
Even after Argo AI abruptly went out of business last autumn and slammed the brakes on Ford Motor Company’s and Volkswagen AG’s self-driving programs, General Motors was touting subsidiary Cruise’s accelerating progress.
While losing money so far, GM in its most recent quarterly earnings report touted 3 million miles of testing having come just 49 days after it reached the 2-million mark, with 4 million miles expected even more quickly.
GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson has forecast Cruise would post $1 billion in gross revenues by 2025.
Cruise’s 3 million miles of testing pale next to Waymo’s 20 million. The Alphabet subsidiary launched in 2009 as Google’s self-driving unit, testing extensively in Silicon Valley around the company’s Mountain View headquarters, south of San Francisco and north of San Jose, for much of the ‘10s, where most of those miles were logged.
Last January, Waymo announced it had reached 1 million miles’ AV driving in the San Francisco Bay Area and Phoenix, and reported just two crashes that met the criteria for inclusion in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s car crash database, according to The Verge.
One of those two involved a Waymo Jaguar that was rear-ended by a driver on his mobile phone.
Despite Waymo’s—and especially Cruise’s—growing pains, the safety benefits are worth it, says Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions.
“It’s amazing how far the self-driving technology has come in such a short period of time,” Fiorani says.
Cruise Chevy Bolt EV in San Francisco.
“All of the forces limiting the expansion of self-driving vehicles are being countered by the idea that competition is out there, and someone will perfect this particular mousetrap and corner the market. The technology needs time to develop, but balancing the real-world learning necessary with the risk to human life is difficult.”
The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency has reported “nearly 600 known incidents involving driverless vehicles,” (anything from stopping abruptly to a collision) according to Axios San Francisco.
The California DMV does not have a deadline or timeline of when its investigation into Cruise’s latest mishaps will close, but it “reserves the right, following investigation of the facts, to suspend or revoke testing and/or deployment permits if there is determined to be an unreasonable risk to public safety.”
Cruise public relations executives did not respond to multiple emails requesting comment.
If autonomous-vehicle service comes to your town, do you look forward to giving it a try? Please comment below.
Contributing Editor
As a kid growing up in Metro Milwaukee, Todd Lassa impressed childhood friends with his ability to identify cars on the street by year, make, and model. But when American automakers put an end to yearly sheetmetal changes, Lassa turned his attention toward underpowered British sports cars with built-in oil leaks. After a varied early journalism career, he joined Autoweek, then worked in Motor Trend’s and Automobile’s Detroit bureaus, before escaping for Mountain Maryland with his wife, three dogs, three sports cars (only one of them British), and three bicycles. Lassa is founding editor of thehustings.news, which has nothing to do with cars.
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