A Cruise autonomous taxi in San Francisco, California, USA, Thursday, August 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | David Paul Morris Bloomberg | Getty Images
Uber Technologies and General Motors Corporation’s Cruise has agreed to a multi-year partnership under which the embattled self-driving car company plans to offer driverless rides to Uber users as soon as next year.
Thursday’s announcement comes as Cruise attempts to revive its robo-taxi business, which ceased operations following an incident in October 2023 when a pedestrian in San Francisco was first hit by a passenger in another vehicle. The human driver was dragged 20 feet by an autonomous Cruise vehicle after being hit.
State and federal regulators have investigated the incident, which led to the departure of Cruise leaders, including CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt, and resulted in significant layoffs.
Cruise CEO Marc Whitten and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi both welcomed the partnership Press releasestressing that these companies believe autonomous vehicles can be deployed safely.
“Cruise’s mission is to use driverless technology to create safer streets and redefine urban life,” Whitten said in the release. “We’re excited to partner with Uber to bring safe, reliable, autonomous driving to more people. benefits, opening up a new era of urban travel.”
Khosrowshahi said in a press release that Uber is “excited to partner with Cruise and look forward to launching it next year.”
Cruise declined to provide details about its restart plans or the terms of its partnership with Uber.
In 2016, Uber aimed to develop its own self-driving car technology and partnered with Volvo to achieve this goal. But Uber abandoned that effort after an incident in 2018, when a self-driving Uber car struck and killed a woman named Elaine Herzberg while she was riding her bicycle Crossing the road in Tempe, Arizona. Uber safety driver Rafaela Vasquez, who was in the car at the time, was eventually detained bear legal responsibility for this event.
Since then, Uber has become a partner to other self-driving car developers. it has been linked to GoogleIts subsidiary Waymo will provide driverless rides or food delivery services to Uber users through robotaxis in Arizona.
During Uber’s recent earnings call, analysts asked the company what long-term impact the emergence of robo-taxis might have on the ride-hailing giant’s business.
Khosrowshahi said on the call that “AV players” are using Uber at a much higher rate than “without a first-party network.” He also predicted that “there’s going to be quite a mixed period as self-driving technology develops and regulators are trying to figure out how to regulate it.” He added, “We don’t think it’s going to be a winner-take-all market.”
Cruise rival Waymo said this week it is already offering 100,000 paid robo-taxi rides per week in the cities where it has commercial operations in the United States: San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. The company is also testing and planning to expand its services to Austin, Texas.
The new partnership isn’t the first time GM has partnered with a ride-hailing company. General Motors invested $500 million in Lyft in early 2016 with plans to eventually develop a fleet of self-driving cars that can be summoned using the Lyft mobile app. But that never happened because GM decided to launch its own vehicles and network through Cruise.
A spokesperson for Cruise said that despite Thursday’s announcement, the company remains focused on relaunching its own driverless rides service and app.
Cruise is currently conducting supervised self-driving vehicle testing with safety drivers in Phoenix, Dallas and Houston.
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