American car giant General Motors (GM) has abandoned plans for its self-driving taxi venture in the wake of a string of safety failures.
Despite ploughing billions of dollars into its Cruise robotaxi and deploying the vehicles on US roads, the Detroit-based carmaker said it would no longer fund the project – owing to an “increasingly competitive market”.
It comes after Cruise has faced a string of damaging setbacks, including a high-profile incident in which one of its cars dragged a pedestrian 20 ft along a San Francisco road last year, leading her to be rushed to hospital.
The company was also fined earlier this year after withholding details about the crash, which saw it temporarily take its entire fleet of robotaxis off the road.
Its cars have also been involved in a number of high-profile failures, ranging from driving into wet cement to passengers being jolted by sudden braking.
GM said it would axe funding “given the considerable time and resources needed to scale the business”.
The company had put more than $10bn (£7.8bn) into its majority-owned Cruise business, which it acquired in 2016.
Following its latest decision, Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, said: “We looked at the amount of money to deploy a robotaxi business and to maintain that business and grow it, it’s quite a bit of capital. A robotaxi business is not GM’s core business.”
However, Kyle Vogt, the founder and former chief executive of Cruise, hit out at GM following the retreat.
Mr Vogt, who left the company last year, wrote on social media: “In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies.”
String of incidents
Cruise, founded in 2013, was seen as a leading player in driverless cars, and GM acquired the company amid a flurry of industry excitement around the technology.
The company secured billions in further funding and deployed fully autonomous cars on San Francisco streets in 2021 – becoming the first company to offer paid-for rides to the US public the following year.
However, the wider deployment of its cars after San Francisco liberalised driverless taxi rules led to a string of incidents.
In one case, around 10 of its vehicles caused traffic chaos by stalling at junctions in a busy part of the city. Meanwhile, another incident saw one of its vehicles hit a fire engine.
Its most serious incident involved a Cruise car seriously injuring a woman who had been flung into the car’s path by another vehicle, dragging her under its wheels for several metres instead of stopping.
The company paid the woman a reported $8m settlement, also shelling out more than $2m in fines to regulators after withholding information in official reports.
It pulled its cars from the road last year shortly after being suspended by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, before reintroducing them earlier this year.
General Motors’ decision to scrap the driverless taxis follows a wider strategy shift, dialling back plans for electric vehicles and focusing on more profitable parts of the business.
Instead, it will put resources into creating advanced safety systems for its cars with the hope of eventually offering autonomous driving as a feature in the future.
General Motors had targeted $50bn (£39bn) of revenue from its self-driving taxis by 2030.
Many rivals are still betting on self-driving taxis to take off, such as Google’s parent company Alphabet’s Waymo and Elon Musk’s Tesla.
However, mounting costs and issues with getting them to drive responsibly are hardly unique to Cruise.
While Waymo has faced less intense scrutiny and has fewer cars on the road, its vehicles have also been recorded interfering with emergency services and angered residents with constant honking.
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