An autonomous cruise taxi in San Francisco, California, USA, on Thursday, August 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg |
Uber Technologies And General Motors’ Cruise has agreed to a multi-year partnership under which the controversial autonomous vehicle company plans to offer driverless rides to Uber users as early as next year.
Thursday’s announcement came as Cruise seeks to revive its robotaxi business after the company suspended operations following an October 2023 incident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a driverless Cruise vehicle after she had previously been struck by a human driver in another car.
State and federal regulators have been investigating the incident, which led to an exodus of Cruise executives, including CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt, and massive layoffs.
Both Cruise CEO Marc Whitten and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi praised the partnership in a press release and emphasized that the companies are convinced that autonomous vehicles can be used safely.
“Cruise is committed to using driverless technology to create safer streets and redefine urban life,” Whitten said in the press release. “We are excited to partner with Uber to bring the benefits of safe, reliable, autonomous driving to even more people and usher in a new era of urban mobility.”
Khosrowshahi said in the press release that Uber is “excited to partner with Cruise and looks forward to launching next year.”
Cruise declined to provide details about its relaunch plans or the terms of its partnership with Uber.
In 2016, Uber sought to develop its own autonomous vehicle technology and partnered with Volvo to do so. However, Uber abandoned those efforts after a 2018 incident in which a self-driving Uber car struck and killed a woman named Elaine Herzberg as she pushed her bike across a street in Tempe, Arizona. Uber safety driver Rafaela Vasquez, who was on board at the time, was ultimately held legally liable for the incident.
Since then, Uber has partnered with other autonomous vehicle developers. It has partnered with GoogleThe company Waymo wants to offer Uber users in Arizona driverless rides or food deliveries via robot taxis.
During Uber’s recent earnings call, analysts asked the company how the introduction of robotaxis is expected to impact the ride-sharing giant’s business in the long term.
Khosrowshahi said on the call that “AV players” are seeing much higher utilization with Uber than they would “without a first-party network.” He also predicted there will be a “pretty long hybrid phase as autonomous driving evolves and regulators try to figure out exactly how to regulate it.” He added, “We don’t think this is going to be a winner-takes-all market.”
Cruise rival Waymo announced this week that it is already providing 100,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the cities where it operates commercially in the U.S.: San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. The company is also currently testing its service in Austin, Texas, and plans to reach that location.
The new partnership is not the first between GM and a ride-sharing company. GM invested $500 million in Lyft in early 2016 and planned to eventually develop a fleet of autonomous vehicles that could be summoned via Lyft’s mobile app. However, that never happened as GM opted to launch its own vehicles and network through Cruise instead.
A Cruise spokeswoman said the company remains focused on relaunching its own ride-sharing service and driverless app despite Thursday’s announcement.
Cruise is currently conducting tests of supervised autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in Phoenix, Dallas and Houston.
