Table Of Content
- G.M.’s Cruise Moved Fast in the Driverless Race. It Got Ugly.
- Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigns
- Vogt resigns as CEO of Cruise following safety questions, recalls of self-driving vehicles
- More from this stream Friday news dumps: all the news companies hoped you wouldn’t notice
- After robotaxi dragged pedestrian 20 feet, Cruise founder and CEO resigns
Former Tesla president Jon McNeill, who’s been a board member at GM for several years, was named vice chairman of the Cruise board alongside Barra. 2023 has been a bumpy ride for Cruise; less than a month ago, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the company's driverless permits in San Francisco due to the cars causing an "unreasonable risk to public safety." The DMV action came three weeks after a Cruise vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. A woman entered a crosswalk at nighttime and was hit by two cars, the second of which was the Cruise vehicle. First, a Nissan Sentra "tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV," Cruise said in a description of the incident. "Today I resigned from my position as CEO of Cruise," co-founder Kyle Vogt wrote in a post on twitter.com.
G.M.’s Cruise Moved Fast in the Driverless Race. It Got Ugly.
There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating what has happened. Our approach is working with regulators, press, the public, and other stakeholders simply must improve. We’ve got to come back with a new plan that is grounded in what we’ve learned. He resigned Sunday night, less than a month after the struggling robotaxi company lost its license to operate in California and halted operations of its fleet.
Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigns
He argued that self-driving cars would lead to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities, using the example of a young girl killed in a San Francisco intersection to bolster his argument. Cruise even bought a full-page ad in The New York Times declaring “human drivers are terrible” and holding up its driverless cars as the only solution. And Vogt confidently took the stage at an investor conference and said Cruise’s steering wheel- and pedal-less Origin shuttles were “just days away” from federal approval — despite no such approval pending. According to Cruise, he also served as president and chief technology officer. Kan has also resigned from the company, one day after Vogt's resignation, according to Reuters.
Vogt resigns as CEO of Cruise following safety questions, recalls of self-driving vehicles
“The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we’ve proven there is something far better around the corner,” Vogt wrote in a message to Cruise workers posted on X. On Saturday, one day before resigning, Vogt reportedly apologized to staff in an email. Complete digital access plus the FT newspaper delivered Monday-Saturday. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders.
More from this stream Friday news dumps: all the news companies hoped you wouldn’t notice
Eventually, an Uber self-driving car killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona, which resulted in the company shuttering the whole division. “We continue to believe strongly in Cruise’s mission and the potential of its transformative technology as we look to make transportation safer, cleaner and more accessible,” Barra stated in an email to employees, according to TechCrunch. Rather than sit back and let driverless cars come to them eventually, Barra insisted on GM staying in the driver’s seat. And now it has to deal with the fallout when that company’s “move fast and break things” culture has resulted in a crisis. Vogt will retain his prior positions of chief technology officer and president of the company.
First responders in San Francisco said the cars didn’t always react appropriately to the presence of police and fire vehicles. In August, a fire truck responding to an emergency with sirens on collided with a Cruise vehicle in an intersection after the vehicle failed to pull over. In mid-October, Cruise said it had improved its technology’s responses to emergency vehicles. On October 24, the California DMV yanked Cruise’s operating permit, and two days later the company pulled all of its remaining AVs from its operational cities in Arizona and Texas. Previously, Cruise had targeted a rollout of its fleet to a total of 10 cities, including Nashville and San Diego by the end of 2023.
After robotaxi dragged pedestrian 20 feet, Cruise founder and CEO resigns
GM’s Cruise CEO resigns amid concerns over driverless car safety - The Guardian
GM’s Cruise CEO resigns amid concerns over driverless car safety.
Posted: Mon, 20 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Another Cruise robotaxi hit a fire truck in San Francisco in August. Days after this incident, Cruise cars collided with a San Francisco fire truck on Turk and Polk Streets while responding to an emergency call. One person was injured with non-life-threatening injuries from the crash. California's DMV requested that the autonomous vehicles' fleet be cut in half, an order the company had complied with.
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The company’s main operations were historically based in San Francisco, but Cruise lost its permits to operate there following the accident. Cruise began expanding its paid service area in the Phoenix area in August 2023. Technological issues aside, what really put Cruise in hot water late last year was its response to the incident.
His resignation follows an accident where a pedestrian who was struck by another vehicle became trapped underneath a Cruise robotaxi, which dragged her as it attempted to pull over. Rescuers needed to use the jaws of life to free her after Cruise disabled the vehicle. The Cruise Board understands and respects his decision to resign as CEO, and we wish him well in his next chapter.
Two days later, Cruise went further and voluntarily suspended all of its driverless operations around the country, taking 400 or so driverless cars off the road. Since then, Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media. A video, which TechCrunch viewed a day after the incident, showed the robotaxi braking aggressively and coming to a stop over the woman. The DMV’s order of suspension stated that Cruise withheld about seven seconds of video footage, which showed the robotaxi then attempting to pull over and subsequently dragging the woman 20 feet. The automaker’s driverless car subsidiary, Cruise, announced last night the resignation of Kyle Vogt as CEO. The decision came over a month after an incident in which a hit-and-run victim became pinned under a Cruise vehicle and then was dragged 20 feet to the side of the road.
Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.’s expansion plans. Most automakers have already dialed back their autonomous ambitions. Last year, Ford and Volkswagen pulled their funding from Argo AI, forcing the company to cease operations. Toyota’s vision for a futuristic city teeming with self-driving cars has been significantly delayed. In 2022, AV investments went down nearly 60 percent year over year as startups struggled through layoffs or outright closures.
The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we’ve proven there is something far better around the corner.
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