Free Uber Cruise on the Paris Seine
During the Olympic Games, Uber is offering free rides on the Seine to loyal users. To book, simply sign up for a seat in the Uber app.
Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving car subsidiary, is partnering with ride-sharing company Uber Technologies Inc. in a multi-year deal, the companies announced Thursday.
The companies did not disclose financial details of the agreement, but said they plan to launch the partnership next year with a certain number of autonomous vehicles based on the Chevrolet Bolt.
Once the service is launched and an Uber passenger requests a qualified ride through the Uber app, they may be offered the option to select a self-driving Cruise vehicle.
“Cruise is committed to using driverless technology to create safer streets and redefine urban life,” said Marc Whitten, CEO of Cruise, in a statement. “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.”
Uber’s CEO said the company was excited about the partnership.
“As the largest mobility and delivery platform, we believe Uber can play an important role in safely and reliably bringing autonomous technology to consumers and cities around the world,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO, in a statement.
No premiere for either
Uber once planned to develop its own self-driving cars and entered into a partnership with Volvo in 2016. That partnership ended when a self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a woman as she pushed her bike across a street in Tempe, Arizona, in 2018. Uber safety driver Rafaela Vasquez, who was on board at the time, was ultimately held liable for the incident, according to www.wired.com.
Uber has partnered with Google-owned Waymo to offer driverless rides or food deliveries via robotaxis to Uber users in Arizona.
This new partnership with Uber is not the first between GM and a ride-hailing company. In 2016, GM invested $500 million in Lyft with plans to eventually build a fleet of self-driving cars that could be ordered through Lyft’s mobile app. But in 2018, GM decided to launch its own vehicles and network through Cruise instead.
Cruise spokeswoman Tiffany Testo said Cruise remains focused on “relaunching our own self-driving car app and service. The launch of this partnership will follow after that and will be independent of the rides offered on their platform.”
GM’s continued support of Cruise
As of this spring, Cruise, founded in 2013, is one step closer to restarting its driverless robo-taxi business after suspending all services and recalling its vehicles late last year. Since June, Cruise has been driving manually again in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas. Supervised driving is already underway in Phoenix and Dallas, according to a blog on www.getcruise.com.
During the company’s second-quarter earnings call in July, GM CEO Mary Barra said GM was ending production of the Cruise Origin, a self-driving bus-like vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals. It was assembled at Factory Zero in Detroit and Hamtramck for use in a Cruise robotaxi fleet.
Barra said Cruise will focus on the next-generation Chevrolet Bolt, not the Origin, for its next autonomous vehicle. This will eliminate the regulatory uncertainty we faced with the Origin due to its unique design. In addition, the unit cost will be much lower, which will help Cruise optimize its resources.”
Cruise suspended all operations last fall after an incident in October in San Francisco, where the company is headquartered. A human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian and pushed her into an oncoming self-driving Cruise car, which dragged her several meters and critically injured the woman. Cruise had been using modified Chevrolet Bolts at the time.
The aftermath of the Oct. 2 accident led regulators to suspend Cruise from further operations in San Francisco. Cruise then decided to shut down all of its operations nationwide. Cruise was also accused of misleading federal regulators about the incident. Ultimately, Cruise laid off nine executives and about 24% of its full-time employees, or about 900 people. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and co-founder and chief product officer Dan Kan resigned.
As the Free Press reported, GM has invested about $8 billion in Cruise since 2016. Cruise officials once promised to generate $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025, but the subsidiary hasn’t made any money. In April, Barra reiterated to Wall Street that safely restarting Cruise “while delivering strong margins and cash flow” is GM’s top priority this year.
GM has been steadfast in its support of the company’s mission, and earlier this year GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said the company expected to spend $1.7 billion this year to operate Cruise. That’s a slight decrease from GM’s spending on Cruise in previous years, which was around $2 billion per year.
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @Subscribe. Read more about General Motors and subscribe to our car newsletter. Become a subscriber.
