Would you take a taxi ride in a car without a driver? If you live in California you may soon be able to make that choice as driverless-car company Cruise has struck a deal with ride-sharing company Uber to send self-driving cars to pick up customers.
The two companies say their joint program will launch in 2025 and will let Uber patrons pick a driverless Cruise car for “qualified trips” (they don’t give detail). It will start in one unnamed California city, and the first such cars will be modified Chevrolet Bolt models.
This is a change in fortune for Cruise, which lost its state license to give riders driverless car rides after the state found the company was responsible for a crash that sent a pedestrian to the hospital. The car apparently struck someone walking and then continued to drag the person through the streets of San Francisco.
Earlier in 2018, an self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, which led to the company hitting the stop button on the driverless service in many cities.
As of this writing, Cruise is still barred in the Golden State from operating autonomous cars, but the company Waymo is allowed to do so and is operating in San Francisco. Waymo plans to start offering the service in other Bay Area cities and towns, then to expand service into Southern California. According to the company, 100,000 people every week are paying to take rides in cars with no drivers.
Cruise was started in 2013 and is a General Motors company. The first cities in which it operated were Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix. A company spokesman said that when Cruise and Uber launch their shared project they will likely pick one of those cities as their test bed. CEO Marc Whitten released a statement saying the company’s mission is to use driverless cars to “create safer streets and redefine urban life.”
Whitten came to Cruise after its former head, Kyle Vogt, left after Cruise lost its driverless “driver’s license” over the pedestrian injury in San Francisco. The new program with Uber is part of an attempt by the company to rebuild its reputation along with its revenue.
So far, it has not been a profitable venture for GM; quite the contrary. Between 2021 and 2023, the company lost the automaker almost $6 billion.
