Name: Why Cruise Self-Driving Pause May Be Setback for Whole Industry
Uploaded: 2023-10-30T18:45:00Z
Duration: 6 min 46 s
Description: General Motors’ self-driving car unit Cruise has paused its U.S. operations after California regulators called its vehicles unsafe. WSJ reporter Ryan Felton explains what this decision means for the future of autonomous vehicles and rivals like Google’s self-driving unit Waymo. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters

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General Motors’ self-driving car unit Cruise has paused its U.S. operations after California regulators called its vehicles unsafe. WSJ reporter Ryan Felton explains what this decision means for the future of autonomous vehicles and rivals like Google’s self-driving unit Waymo. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters

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Why Cruise Self-Driving Pause May Be Setback for Whole Industry

Zoe: Welcome to "Tech News Briefing". It's Monday, October 30th. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street Journal. The self-driving car company Cruise is suspending all of its driverless operations in the US. The decision comes after California regulators pulled the company's autonomous driving permit in the state and said the vehicles aren't safe in public. Cruise is majority controlled by General Motors, and it's been one of the leaders in the autonomous vehicle sector. Along with a driverless taxi service in San Francisco, Cruise has been expanding in Nashville, Miami, and other cities nationwide. So what does this move mean for Cruise, GM, and the future of self-driving cars? Our reporter, Ryan Felton is here to talk about that. Ryan, start by reminding us why California pulled the Cruise's self-driving permit.

Ryan: Earlier this month, there was a incident involving a hit and run where a pedestrian was struck by a car. Essentially sent her into the path of a Cruise car operating without a driver behind this initial vehicle. The Cruise car collided with this woman and basically had her pinned and it performed this sort of maneuver that Cruise says the cars are designed to do when it detects some sort of obstruction and pulled off to the side of the road. In the process of pulling off the side of the road, it dragged the woman about 20 feet, according to the DMV, at about seven miles an hour, the company and the DMV met about this incident the following day, and according to the DMV Cruise showed it a video of what happened, but that video stops before this additional pull off maneuver where the woman was dragged an additional 20 feet. The DMV says it didn't learn about this until it spoke with and heard about it from another government agency, requested the fuller copy of the video, and upon receipt of that video from Cruise decided to suspend its permitting license because of, as it put it, Cruise misrepresenting certain aspects of the safety of its technology. One thing to note though is Cruise, as of now does fully dispute the DMV's timeline of events and says it showed the agency the full video during the initial meeting.

Zoe: So there's some dispute over what happened in California. What has Cruise said about its decision to halt all of its US operations?

Ryan: Following the suspension of the permit, Cruise said in a nutshell that the important thing is to take steps to rebuild public trust and examine how it does work internally. They have routinely said safety is the utmost importance. They point out that human drivers are involved in numerous severe fatal crashes, and that's why they want to build autonomous vehicles is to help improve safety.

Zoe: Were there safety concerns or concerns from regulators outside of those raised in California?

Ryan: Yeah, specifically the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for just under a year now has had a, what's called a safety defect investigation ongoing, which is essentially looking to see if there's some sort of risk to the driving public or just the public in general, based on what it said was some incidents involving Cruise cars like suddenly braking too hard, stalling out. Following the most recent incident, the agency has opened a separate defect probe to look at other sorts of scenarios, particularly about the cars and how they act around pedestrians. So NHTSA has taken some further action that could have separate ramifications, but compared to what the DMV's doing, the suspension is more of a near term pressing matter because it was Cruise's biggest market for the commercial operations.

Zoe: What does this mean for Cruise's majority stakeholder GM and its ambitions?

Ryan: GM has staked a big claim with autonomous driving. The company has spent billions of dollars to try to shore up and get Cruise operational. It has high hopes for it, targeting a billion dollars in revenue in 25, many multiples higher of that by the end of the decade. And also it's coming as the industry itself has really pulled back from getting into this side of the business. There are a lot of companies testing and trying to perfect autonomous driving, but at the pace and rate that GM's going, I mean, there's really only Waymo, which is the self-driving car unit of Alphabet aggressively entering into the market now. So with respect to the company's ambitions, it is a setback just in general because there are investors who have had concerns about how much money was being spent on this and the timeline to really hit profitability.

Zoe: And just to remind listeners, Waymo, like Cruise was allowed to expand its number of self-driving taxis in San Francisco back in August, and this decision by California regulators doesn't affect Waymo. But Ryan, are there bigger takeaways for the industry from Cruise's situation?

Ryan: We're talking about a technology that for several years has been a focal point of interest and intrigue, but now we have actual driverless cars on the road and in many cases they're operating fine. But there are instances like this that lead to questions about whether some of this technology is being rushed, for example. And so the bigger takeaway is it really could be a much longer slog than some may have hoped in the industry to really not just win over approval from regulators, but to actually just make sure that the technology is working in a way that doesn't pose these sorts of issues.

Zoe: That was our reporter, Ryan Felton, and that's it for "Tech News Briefing". Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with Deputy Editor Chris Tinsley and head of News Audio, Alana Patterson. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow, thanks for listening.

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