Cruise (autonomous vehicle)

Waymo After several years of testing its autonomous vehicles on city streets without a human engineer behind the wheel, Waymo is about to send its fully driverless cars onto freeways for the first time. The Alphabet-owned company announced the move in a blog post on Monday, signaling a notable expansion of its driverless car program. Waymo has been offering robotaxi rides to regular folks enrolled in its Waymo One ridesharing program in Phoenix and San Francisco, but the first freeway rides across Phoenix will be…

Cruise Beleaguered autonomous car startup Cruise has laid off 900 workers, equal to about a quarter of its workforce. The news comes a day after nine executives were also dismissed. The General Motors-backed firm has suffered a series of setbacks in recent months, triggered by an accident on the streets of San Francisco in October when one of its self-driving cars came to a halt on top of a woman, pinning her to the ground just moments after she’d been hit by a human-driven car. The incident caused the woman serious…

It’s not getting any easier for beleaguered autonomous-car startup Cruise after a report on Tuesday suggested its main backer, General Motors (GM), is about to slash funding for the startup. Cruise recently suspended nationwide testing on U.S. streets following a string of troubling incidents involving its autonomous cars, the most serious of which occurred in San Francisco last month when a Cruise car came to a halt on top of a woman who seconds earlier had been knocked over by a human-driven vehicle. GM will reveal…

Cruise co-founder Daniel Kan has quit the beleaguered autonomous-car company, Reuters reported on Monday. His departure as chief product officer comes a day after Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt announced he was leaving the company that the pair set up 10 years ago. The significant upheaval follows a string of safety-related incidents involving its driverless cars on the streets of San Francisco, the same city where the General Motors-backed startup is headquartered. The most of serious of these happened in San…

Cruise General Motors-owned  Cruise has halted production of its fully driverless vehicle — the Origin — just over a week after it suspended robotaxi operations nationwide following a number of troubling incidents involving its cars. The news was announced by Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt during a meeting with staff on Monday, according to Forbes, which obtained audio of the gathering. The Origin van is a purpose-built driverless vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and was trumpeted as the future of Cruise’s robotaxi…

Autonomous car startup Cruise has run into trouble in California after the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said Tuesday it was suspending its deployment and driverless permits with immediate effect. The dramatic intervention comes just a couple of months after General Motors-owned Cruise was given permission to operate robotaxi services around the clock, but also follows a number of troubling incidents involving self-driving Cruise cars on the streets of San Francisco, where it’s been carrying out tests on…

Driving in thick fog is a big enough challenge for humans, but it turns out self-driving cars find it pretty tricky, too. Overwhelmed by dense fog in San Francisco early on Tuesday morning, five of Waymo’s fully driverless vehicles suddenly parked by the side of a residential street in what appeared to be a precautionary measure, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Another of its cars apparently came to halt in the middle of the street, the news outlet said. Other vehicles were unable to pass as “baffled motorists…