Transportation and disability advocate. Created and administer the site Robotaxi.rodeo . Co-founded Walk San Francisco (walkSF.org), Swiftly (goSwift.ly), and NextBus (NextBus.com). Working to make transportation accessible and safe for all. Been disabled by serious long COVID since 2022.
GM has drastically lowered the value of Cruise by billions and billions of dollars. Cruise valuation dropped roughly from $30 billion to $15 billion. And GM is taking a loss of about $11.6 billion.
In a surprising turnabout, the CPUC granted Waymo permission to expand service to the Bay Area peninsula and to most of Los Angeles. This still does not allow Waymo to provide service to the SFO airport though.
It isn’t looking good. It has been 4 months since their epic disaster of seriously injuring a pedestrian, misinforming regulators and the public, and shutting down service. They have pushed out almost all of their executives and a quarter of their staff. And they do not appear to have a recovery plan. Things do not look good. One has to expect Cruise to be sold in a fire sale or simply abandoned by the end of 2024. This post covers a few recent factors that point in this direction.
This article is only of interest because it shows how drastically robotaxi plans have changed over the last few years. Waymo purchased from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (now Stellantis) 100 minivans in 2016 and then another 500 in 2017. In January 2018 it was announced that Waymo was ordering "thousands" of minivans for a 2018 self-driving fleet rollout. In August 2018 it was announced that Stellantis was going to supply (up to) 62,000 minivans to Waymo/Google. But that is all just a distant memory.
While robotaxi companies continue to make false claims about how they are all about safety, an actual solution moves forward. California Senate Bill 961 by Senator Scott Wiener would require Intelligent Speed Assist in new California vehicles in 2027. This is a proven, equitable, and workable solution.
