Cruise is rapidly approaching a cliff

Everyone now questions the viability of Cruise. They have suspended service for 6 months now, have zero revenue, still don’t have a CEO, and many other insurmountable problems. Their only announcements have been that they are giving up more office space in San Francisco and that they will start to drive their vehicles in Phoenix, but with human drivers, and only for mapping streets. My prediction continues to be that they will be sold or shut down by the end of 2024.

But there is some new information, though not covered in the media. According to the GM Quarterly Earnings Deck for Q1 2024 from their April 23, 2024 conference call, Cruise doesn’t even have enough cash to make it past Q3, 2024!

Note that while their expenses have indeed dropped compared to Q1 by 33% from $600m to $400m, their cash has dropped from $2,500m to $700m, a drop of over 70%. And given that they do not have more layoffs or other significant cost cutting measures planned, they will easily burn through the remaining $700m of cash in just two quarters. Due to the demise of robotaxi hype, outside investors will not be interested in stepping in financially. At that point GM will have to provide new funding, which will be quite a problem for the GM CEO.

Meanwhile, the Q1 report includes only this paltry slide to explain what Cruise is doing to get out of their predicament: