The Cruise Origin, here equipped with a wheelchair ramp, will be on standby for an indefinite period
Leaks of General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi unit reveal that part of their rebuilding plan after their failure in San Francisco could involve working in another state like Texas or Arizona, and continuing the pause in deployment of their custom-designed robotaxi known as Origin. Although painful, this plan makes a lot of sense as it stands.
Previously, Cruise had suffered a long series of setbacks that led to his removal from the streets of California, voluntary discontinuation of service in other states, and the eventual resignation of its founder/CEO.
Cruise was built in San Francisco. It’s an obvious choice, given that their company was founded there and their employees reside there. It also presents a challenging, but not impossible, driving environment in which cars can learn most of what they need to drive in any city, but at the same time there is no snow to make the task a little easier. Cruise invested heavily in San Francisco and the idea that it was a great place to learn the ropes.
Politically, it was not at all friendly, and Cruise quickly found himself at odds with city officials who, despite having no jurisdiction over driving, wanted it removed. To a lesser extent, they also wanted Waymo, from Silicon Valley, to exit as well.
Cruise also quickly announced plans for, and even began production of, a custom vehicle designed to be nothing more than a robo-taxi. Waymo and most other companies offer their services with modified standard maps, although Amazon’s Zoox unit also intends to start with a somewhat similar custom vehicle. Of course, making cars is what GM does, so for Cruise it was a natural exploitation of their parents’ skills. After Cruise lost his licenses, GM suspended production of the Origin and it now appears to be indefinite, and Cruise will work to get a robo-taxi. service that works with the regular GM cars (now the Chevy Bolt) that they already use.
These aren’t permanent decisions – Cruise certainly intends to return to SF and build the Origin – but they are correct decisions for now.
Good decisions
Although Cruise says he wants to rebuild trust and can put a lot of effort into it, the task is difficult to accomplish in San Francisco. SF is biased against him and will continue to be for some time. Even if they do not have competence, they are not without power or influence.
The harsh reality is that SF, while often considered the tech capital of the world, is sometimes quite the opposite. When the Segway scooter was introduced, the company went to great lengths to reach out to cities to ensure it would be legal there. SF was one of the few places to ban it before it took hold in earnest.
When we were building the Starship delivery robot, we planned to move the company’s headquarters to San Francisco. Then a city supervisor decided to launch a campaign to effectively ban curbside delivery robots and passed laws restricting their use where other cities were passing laws to accommodate them. Starship chose not to move to SF.
San Francisco may therefore not be a good starting point, despite its many advantages. Certainly, operating away from where most staff work is a challenge, both in terms of cost and in terms of the lack of opportunity for all staff to live and work with the product on a regular basis. And indeed, due to DMV restrictions on cruising, the rest of California may not be immediately supportive, although this cannot be avoided in the long term.
Although Cruise has much better relations with the public and governments in Texas and Arizona, where she also deployed, the situation is not perfect. And obviously people will ask, “If this was banned in California, why should we want it here?” » It will still have to be answered, just like California, but this answer will be easier to give.
Pausing Origin is easier. As Waymo develops a custom robotaxi with Geely Zeekr, it looks much more like a car. You can do most of what you need to do for a long time in regular cars, and if you have to prioritize, that’s what you do. It will be a long time before a custom vehicle like the Origin, Zoox or Waymo/Zeekr constitutes a significant competitive difference. Indeed, it will take a long time before competition becomes a major factor.
There are, however, a few attributes of the Origin that Cruise will miss. The first is the ability to serve people with disabilities. It’s a good thing to do, and it’s required by law once you get to actual deployment, and it’s likely to improve the public’s appreciation of the value of the service – looking good while doing really good.
Another ability that the Origin strictly didn’t have is the ability to move backwards. The Zoox has no front or rear, so if it’s faced with a situation where it needs to turn around, it doesn’t need to turn, it just changes direction. This turns out to be more important than initially expected, as it is a good option when a vehicle encounters a situation like an emergency scene or vehicle, road closure or other similar problem. It is now possible for a regular vehicle to drive in reverse, provided it can have red brake lights in front and white headlights in the rear at night. This would be a bit confusing to others on the road (unlike the Zoox, as it lacks a front or rear.) To avoid this confusion, a vehicle can simply reverse until it sees a good spot to quickly make a 3. turning point in an aisle or similar. Electric cars are generally capable of reversing at full speed. If cruisers had the means to quickly depart when they encountered emergency scenes, they might not have irritated SF firefighters so much.
The final capability of the Origin is that it is more effective at providing a shared ride to a group, such as UberPool style rides. It’s not something the companies will do on day one, but it’s their long-term response to critics who worry that “it’s just more private cars clogging up the streets.” Unlike UberPool, which struggled to convince riders to accept detours to pick up others, Robotaxis, when combined with single-person pods and minimobility vehicles, can create a much more engaging service that customers would want, especially with lower prices.
Waymo will become the household name in San Francisco, but it’s so early in the game that it won’t gain any monopoly over the next year. There’s a lot of debate about how important first-mover advantage really is in the robotaxis space. Of course, Waymo also plans to expand to some of the Texas cities Cruise serves, so they’ll be competitors of sorts, but both with fleets too small to saturate the market.