GM’s Weird Robotaxi Is Going on the Shelf

The scrapped vehicle may have been a little too innovative.

When General Motors paid nearly $1 billion for autonomous driving startup Cruise in 2017, it had grand plans for self-driving taxis. The automaker has made a lot of progress since then but things are still not coming together like it had surely hoped they would.

The latest setback from Cruise came this week when GM CEO Mary Barra told shareholders in a letter that the company’s autonomous driving segment would simplify its path to scale by focusing on the next generation of the Chevy Bolt instead of the Origin, the six-person driverless shuttle bus debuted in 2020.

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The Origin was supposed to be different and it was. Dan Ammann, who was CEO of Cruise at the time, said his company’s engineers were working to build a new mode of transportation from scratch instead of just working with existing vehicle templates. What they came up with was essentially a conversion van with sliding doors, seating for six passengers, no steering wheel, no pedal, no rearview mirror and no windshield wipers. In other words, many of the traditional features that consumers have grown accustomed to and might be uncomfortable with not having.

The Origin may have been a little too innovative. Barra said the vehicle is being scrapped – at least for now – to address regulatory uncertainty tied to its unique design while also helping Cruise optimize its resources by lowering per-unit costs.

GM has provided Cruise with plenty of resources. In 2022, the company poured another roughly $3.5 billion into the unit through a $1.35 billion investment and $2.1 billion to buy Softbank’s stake in the company. But so far, Cruise has been largely a money loser for GM. During the most recent quarter, the company posted a $1.14 billion operating loss, up from $673 million in the same quarter last year.

Besides financially, Cruise has also been a big regulatory and operational headache for GM. The company last October suspended operations when one of its Cruise vehicles dragged a pedestrian about 20 feet while traveling seven miles per hour. Cruise was accused of covering up details about the accident and subsequently had its license suspended in California.

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