The Cruise Origin Was Always Doomed

The Cruise Origin was going to save the world. It was a great marketing device. And it was the only way robotaxis could ever hope to get costs low enough to create a profitable business.

As Forbes magazine described, the hype was legion:

The company has been hyping its Origin vehicle for years: in January 2022, Vogt told Forbes that the Origin was set to hit U.S. streets in 2023, and act as an autonomous delivery vehicle when robotaxi demand was low. In September, Vogt told an investor conference that the company was “days away” from mass production. And as recently as October 24, GM CEO Mary Barra told investors that the car would be on the streets of Tokyo in 2026.

Forbes – Under Fire Over Robotaxi Safety, GM Halts Production Of Cruise Driverless Van – 11/6/23

Yet it all fell apart. This is the story about the Cruise Origin, and its downfall.

The vision – party!

Humorously, the Cruise CEO described the Origin as “a party on wheels”. Its not transportation. Instead, its a lifestyle! Or at least it is a much needed marketing device.

It is peculiar that Cruise was promoting the ability to have 6 people in a robotaxi given that Uber and Lyft have found that shared rides were simply not a good business proposition. Most Uber and Lyfts only have a single passenger, and it is kind of hard to have a very interesting party that way, making the Origin rather pointless.

But a lifestyle is still great for marketing!

The loaf of bread look

Though the unique design was touted as part of the future, it turns out that the design was not unique at all. Chester Dawson and David Welch from Bloomberg wrote a great article way back in March 2020 titled Driverless Cars Have Arrived, and They All Look Like Loaves of Bread. The really do!

Ran right into a building in Austin

On August 24th, 2023, this rather embarrassing incident occurred. Not only did it further show that the Cruise Automated Driving System was not at all ready for prime time, but it also showed that having a vehicle that couldn’t readily be driven by a human was quite problematic.

Fire officials last month were dispatched to an accident west of the Capitol where a Cruise vehicle had driven off the road and into “a small electrical building,” according to Austin Transportation Department records obtained by Axios.

• “It hit the building with enough force to break some brick off (about an 8-inch hole),” the report said. Cruise representatives reportedly told emergency officials that the vehicle had been in “recovery mode” prior to veering off the road, and no one had witnessed the accident.
• Because the Cruise Origin prototype had no steering wheel, the report noted, there was “no way for emergency personnel to quickly move it,” and they had to wait for a tow truck.

Of note: The Origin prototype had a system fault during testing and pulled over safely, according to Cruise, but when live support attempted to re-engage the vehicle, it shifted out of park and rolled into the building at about 6 mph.

Axios

Engine 2 was dispatched to a traffic accident called in by OnStar for a Cruise AV – “Small Bus.” Upon arrival, 3 Cruise representatives were attempting to move the vehicle (via computer) from where it had crashed into 1212 West Avenue. The vehicle had driven off the road, over the sidewalk and a 10 foot patch of grass, then into a small electrical building. It hit the building with enough force to break some brick off (about an 8 inch hole). The Cruise reps stated that the vehicle had been in ‘Recovery Mode’ prior to veering off the road and striking the building; no one had witnessed the accident. The Cruise reps were unable to move the vehicle remotely, and were waiting on a tow truck to pick it up. One thing to note on this Cruise RoboTaxi Bus was that it could seat 6 people (2 rows of 3, facing each other), but did not have a steering wheel or a place for a driver – and therefore no way for emergency personnel to quickly move it.

Report to Austin City Staff – Axios

Well, at least there were no passengers in the errant vehicle.

Winterizing the Origins for 2025

Cruise had such high expectations for the Origin that in September 2023 they were already touting how they were going to “winterize” the vehicle so that it could be used to provide service in cold weather in 2025. TechCrunch even wrote an article on how Cruise was going to provide robotaxi service in the midwest. This shows that Cruise was far too confident about the future of the Origin.

Fake access for those with disabilities

Cruise also relied on the Origin to justify pandering to people with disabilities. They went through a great deal of trouble to allegedly show how the vehicles could be used by people who use wheelchairs. Plans to launch in 2024!

But despite all of their marketing hype it must be noted that an human operator is still needed. There are many people who use wheelchairs who cannot restrain them by themselves. This is why Waymo actually implemented accessibility that actually works.

But alas, on November 6th, 2023, Cruise announced that production of the Origin was suspended, meaning that they won’t be able to provide even fake accessible service. They claim to already have hundreds of the Origin vehicles so will be able to use them when they bring back service again. But given all of their other false statements, and since only a small number of Origins have every been seen, their claim seems incredibly doubtful.

It should be noted that unlike Cruise, Waymo actually has created a legitimate way to provide accessible service.

Importance to Cruise business

The Cruise Origin was actually more important to the future of the company than most realize. It was the one thing that was supposedly able to lower the operating cost to just $1/mile, which is what they believe they can charge passengers. Without that low operating cost, being a profitable business is simply impossible. Without the possibility of a profitable business there is simply no realistic future for Cruise.

This is a reason that ex-Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt falsely stated in September, just a few weeks before service was shut down nationwide, that they were just days away to getting federal regulatory approval for this radically different vehicle that does not have a steering wheel nor an accelerator pedal.

NHTSA told TechCrunch that no decision to grant or deny GM’s petition has been reached, nor has a deadline been set for such a decision.

TechCrunch – 9/7/23

The NHTSA made it clear that this was simply not true.

One can view the original letter from Cruise to NHTSA asking for temporary exemption from federal safety standards, and the initial reply from the NHTSA.

Such exemptions are sometimes given by the NHTSA, if the company can first demonstrate that the vehicles will be just as safe without the usual driver tools, like steering wheel and brake pedal. Nuro received such an exemption in 2020 for their R2 vehicle, which notably are limited to 25mph. But then after burning through most of the $2.1 billion that they had raised, Nuro stopped commercial deployments and have had major layoffs as they pivot to R&D. This means their safety exemption from the NHTSA was all for naught.

One key issue for the NHTSA was that they had not considered rear-facing passenger safety. But Cruise had insisted on designing a vehicle with rear-facing passengers, you know, for that party environment.

It also has to be pointed out that Cruise was not truly working with NHTSA in good faith. They falsely claimed in March 2023 that they were going to go ahead and run Origin vehicles on Texas roads without waiting to get required permit regardless of what the NHTSA did.

Piecemeal manufacturing

In September 2023, Cruise announced that it would start mass producing the Origin vehicles “soon”. Cruise wanted to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving Origins a year.

As previously mentioned, Cruise needed to drive down the cost of service to $1/mile in order to have a viable business. But in order to do so they determined that the Origin would need to last for one million miles instead of the usual 150,000-200,000 miles for passenger cars. They claimed that the Origin was engineered to last one million miles, but that is absurd, especially since they also needed to keep the manufacturing costs low. If GM could figure out how to cost-effectively create cars that could last a million miles, they would have long ago done so. It simply isn’t possible.

And car companies like GM are simply not setup for small scale manufacturing. They always need to produce tens or even hundreds of thousands of a vehicle per year. The lower volumes for the Origin would have always meant much high manufacturing costs, making it nearly impossible to provide cost effective robotaxi service. This alone doomed the Origin.

Cruise Origin discontinued

On November 6th, 2023, Cruise announced that they were halting production of the Cruise Origin vehicles. There wasn’t a direct issue with the Origins themselves. It was simply part of the aftermath of the gruesome October 2nd, 2023 incident where a pedestrian was dragged and seriously injured by a Cruise Chevy Bolt that was driving autonomously. Cruise had to make massive changes, including halting all passenger service, and there were major layoffs. They claimed that the development of the Origin was being paused just temporarily, but it is pretty clear that they will not be able to provide service again without first using human drivers as backups to demonstrate safety of their self driving system. The Origin of course cannot be driven by a human driver, which means that there is no way to demonstrate while using human backup drivers that the self-driving system of the Origins is safe.

And off to the glue factory…

An ignoble end to the poor Cruise Origin:

But perhaps the Origin will be useful for when Back to the Future IIII really comes out: