Well, folks, the great self-driving experiment just hit another pothole. Cruise, GM’s self-driving taxi division, is officially out of the robotaxi game. The company just sent a farewell email to customers, effectively telling them, “Thanks for the ride, but delete my number.”
The timing is about as subtle as a traffic cone on the hood of your taxi… just hours before GM announced it was taking full ownership of Cruise and laying off over 1,000 employees.
A Rocky Road for Cruise
Cruise’s struggles became public last year after one of its self-driving cars dragged a pedestrian following an accident. The incident prompted the California DMV to suspend its operating permit, setting off a chain reaction that led to a nationwide pause in operations. The company has spent months trying to recover, but with growing public skepticism and pressure from regulators, GM is now pulling the plug.
For a minute there, GM looked like it was ahead of the pack. Super Cruise, their hands-free highway driving system, earned high praise when it launched in Cadillac’s CT6 (Ars Technica called it a “game-changer”) about 7 years ago. But when it came to turning that tech into a fully autonomous ride-hailing fleet, things went south.
The Swansong Email
A Farewell from Cruise
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What’s Next for GM in the Self-Driving Space?
GM remains committed to self-driving technology, but its future approach is unclear. With Cruise no longer operating as an independent ride-hailing service, the automaker may shift focus toward integrating autonomous features into personal vehicles rather than running a full-fledged taxi service.
As for the self-driving taxi market, Waymo and other competitors remain active, but Cruise’s exit raises a big question: is fully autonomous ride-hailing actually a viable business model, or just another tech industry fever-dream that wasn’t quite ready for the real world?
