Mexican Media Brands
GM Cruise Delays Autonomous Taxi Service
GM Cruise LLC says its driverless taxis won’t be ready to deploy for paying customers this year after all.
Share
GM Cruise LLC says its driverless taxis won’t be ready to deploy for paying customers this year after all.
CEO Dan Ammann tells Bloomberg News that verifying the safety of the cars is taking longer than expected. He now says the General Motors Co. affiliate will debut its taxis for paying customers in San Francisco sometime in 2020.
Referring to a familiar adage in Silicon Valley, Ammann cautions that “the mindset of ‘move fast and break things’ certainly doesn’t cut it” for autonomous vehicles.
Cruise’s first robotic taxis will be modified versions of GM’s Bolt electric car. Ammann says GM, Cruise and Honda are working on a taxi-specific vehicle for future self-driving services.
Bloomberg notes that Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo driverless-car affiliate also missed its self-declared goal of introducing a commercial driverless ride-hailing service in 2018. The unit has been testing 500 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans in Phoenix for three years, using volunteer test families.
Waymo did begin accepting paying customers for a few of its robotic shuttles—but with a backup driver on board—at the end of last year.
RELATED CONTENT
-
Multiple Choices for Light, High-Performance Chassis
How carbon fiber is utilized is as different as the vehicles on which it is used. From full carbon tubs to partial panels to welded steel tube sandwich structures, the only limitation is imagination.
-
On Fuel Cells, Battery Enclosures, and Lucid Air
A skateboard for fuel cells, building a better battery enclosure, what ADAS does, a big engine for boats, the curious case of lean production, what drivers think, and why Lucid is remarkable
-
Ford Copies Nature
As Nature (yes, capital N Nature) has done a pretty good job of designing things, it is somewhat surprising that Man (ditto) doesn’t follow Nature’s lead more often when it comes to designing objects.
