General Motors pulls plug on Cruise robotaxi challenge | EUROtoday

General Motors has introduced that it’ll cease funding the event of the Cruise self-driving taxi.

The firm says it would now “refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles”.

GM additionally pointed to the more and more aggressive robotaxi market as a cause for the transfer.

In October, Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled the electrical automobile large’s long-awaited robotaxi, the Cybercab, on the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California.

GM attributed the change of technique to “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business”.

The firm didn’t say what number of Cruise workers might be moved over to GM.

GM, which owns about 90% of Cruise, stated it has agreements with different shareholders that can elevate its possession to greater than 97%.

In December 2023, Cruise stated it could reduce 900 jobsa few quarter of its workforce.

The announcement got here as security officers have been investigating the agency after stories of accidents to pedestrians.

Cruise had earlier pulled all of its US autos from testing after California halted its driverless testing allow.

The Detroit-based producer’s chief government Mary Barra has beforehand predicted that the Cruise enterprise may generate $50bn (£39bn) in annual income by 2030.

Rival motor manufacturing corporations have additionally struggled with tasks to construct autonomous autos.

In 2022, Ford and Volkswagen introduced that they’d shut down Argo AI, their self-driving automobile three way partnership.

Meanwhile, the rising robotaxi trade can also be attracting main gamers.

As effectively as Tesla, opponents to create self-driving cabs embrace Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s father or mother firm Alphabet – and know-how large Amazon.

Ride-hailing corporations Uber and Lyft even have ambitions to make use of autonomous autos.