American legacy automaker General Motors will substantially reduce its expenditures on its self-driving business unit Cruise this week, Financial Times reports.
The decision is apparently crucial for the company amid the ongoing challenges involving its Cruise operations.
Report highlights
According to the report, GM will officially disclose the specific amount it plans to deduct from Cruise-related spending on Wednesday.
It is one of the major consequences of the unfortunate pedestrian accident on October 2, 2023. Since then, GM has gradually started to scale back its ambitious plans with Cruise’s robotaxis, including production and operation locations.
GM spokesman Jim Cain confirmed the news, according to Detroit Free Press.
“We haven’t made any announcements about Cruise spending (although Cruise is reducing expenses because their fleet is idle). But you will recall on our last earnings call, we said spending would rise as Cruise expanded. That expansion is now paused.”
GM spokesman Jim Cain
Recent incident
As EV-a2z previously reported, a woman got hit by a human-driven car while she was crossing a street in San Francisco.
In an even more unfortunate turn of events, the victim landed in the way of an upcoming Cruise robotaxi. The self-driving car dragged the victim approximately 20 feet away from the scene.
That said, it is unsurprising that many people expressed increasing safety concerns regarding the Cruise robotaxis’ operations.
Impact
After the unfortunate accident on October 2, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s permits for public operations on October 26.
On November 8, Cruise recalled a total of 950 robotaxis in its fleet. Then, Chief Executive Kyle Vogt and Chief Product Officer Daniel Kan resigned, leaving a $1.9 billion loss so far this year.
Nonetheless, Reuters reported GM’s announcement last week about the new deployment strategy for Cruise robotaxis. The company will apparently relaunch in one unidentified city before expanding operations to other locations. It will also prioritize Bolt-based Cruise self-driving cars in the near future.
All that said, it would be really interesting to see how GM would revive and improve Cruise as major players race to achieve full autonomy.
