Cruise will always be known as the robotaxi company to burn $15B to completely piss off both every resident of San Francisco and all of the government regulators…
SF Examiner reports that the CPUC approved the previously agreed to $112,500 fine for Cruise for withholding information. This paltry fine will of course not affect the behavior of Cruise since it is currently burning a billion dollars a year.
The Verge reports that GM is dumping another $850 million into the dumpster fire that is Cruise. This is on top of the $8.2 billion they have already wasted. At year end they will have to make yet another decision on whether to burn even more money or to just close down the fiasco.
NY Times article on the difficulties Cruise is facing to restarting commercial robotaxi service. Given their many problems described in the article one has to assume that GM will dump Cruise sooner rather than later.
A detailed article by Fortune on what has happened to Cruise since their October 2nd crash. Though it appears that Fortune still believes that GM will do what is needed to make Cruise successful, when it is actually quite clear that Cruise is doomed.
Washington Post reports that Cruise settled with the severely injured person who was dragged by their robotaxi October 2nd, 2023. The settlement amount was between $8 million and $12 million, indicating severe and permanently disabling injuries inflicted due to their weak technology.
In the Q1 2024 financial report for General Motors they show that Cruise only has enough cash to continue operating through Q3. At that point we can expect GM to wave goodbye to their multi-billion dollar investment.
Fortune article on how GM is exploring whether they can get others to bail out Cruise by claiming that it is an AI company, since that is where the money currently is. And still, no plan for restarting actual service.
Cruise posts an update on their blog indicating that they are doing all this great stuff with respect to safety, yet there is absolutely no new information. Why on earth did they post this article??
The Cruise Origin was hyped as being the future of robotaxis, providing low-cost service to everyone, including to people with disabilities. But it turns out it was indeed just hype, and now is a cancelled project. This means more though then just warehousing a bunch of unpermitted vehicles. It means that Cruise has no way of ever succeeding as a business.
New York Magazine article. Apple canceled their EV/AV program, simply because they could not make it workable. Despite the hype, self-driving is far more complicated than most people thought. A bit of successful self-driving doesn't mean that the fantasy can or should always work.
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.
Article from SF Examiner on how the City of San Francisco is objecting to Cruise's proposal to the CPUC to end the investigation into the incident where Cruise vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian.
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.
