This is a good move on Cruise's part. Cruise is still nowhere near the maturity level that Waymo was at when Waymo first started driving on public roads.<p>On the other hand, we definitely need a real competitor to Waymo. It doesn't seem likely, but hopefully some combination of Cruise, Apple(?), Tesla, or another player will be able to have a feasible alternative to Waymo's Driver.
Reevaluating to build public trust would have been fixing things when their cars kept blocking the street or preventing ambulances from getting where they need to go.<p>NOT waiting until you ran over over someone who was hit by a car and then dragging them along the pavement, followed by lying to investigators about it.<p>You don’t get trust back after that.<p>How much do you want to bet all the other cities were suddenly grilling them and they just thought they were about to lose the other licenses as well and this would look better than waiting until they were actually kicked out?
If anybody was still sceptical about why regulators are needed (I'm looking at you e/acc), Cruise weren't going to do this on their own initiative.
Cruise's death knell was when they were bought by GM. There's something insidious about US Detroit-based car companies that keeps them from innovating almost as a rule. It seems they often deliberately prioritize making their cars worse if it can drive up profit.
What I find interesting is that this "press release" reads like a response to an exposé of a toxic internal company culture. But as far as I can tell, this was just a technology failure. It's not very clear to me why they need to "examine their processes" and "take a hard look inwards at how they do work" in order to rectify what was basically a software bug.
This is the right move but I hope they get back out there quickly. We need as many competitors chasing this as possible — it’s a complex problem and is more of a marathon than a sprint.
As expected, the tech bros and AI bros cannot convince the regulators that their so-called level 5 robo-taxi is any safer than a human driver and are forced to stop driverless vehicles operating on the roads.<p>It its hardly difficult to just pause the whole thing since these systems didn’t go further than the SF bubble.<p>Just goes to show that this driverless snake oil essentially put everyone on the roads at risk.
Reminder: the impetus for this is a person was thrown underneath the AV by a human-driven hit and run.<p>The AV did not handle it well -- it should have stopped immediately, rather than pull over.<p>But it's really important not to lose sight of the fact that this situation would have been completely avoided if both cars had been AVs.
Cruise, taking the high road to build public trust. For now.<p>I respect that.<p>Edit: yeah, I get they don’t have a perfect track record. But most tech companies don’t stop even when faced with issues like Cruise. Getting their cars off the road entirely is a major acknowledgment that their tech needs improvement, which is something I never expected from cruise.
Are self-driving cars actually going to be lucrative?<p>Yes, the progress is promising, but it seems to me (as an observer that knows nothing) that things aren't very scalable.<p>- It seems like every city pretty much requires a custom-tailored solution, and they still haven't solved the "downtown" problem.<p>- It's far more of a regulatory minefield than a pure software business model.<p>- The cars themselves, in addition to being expensive, well, cars, also require even more specialized equipment like lidars and infrared cameras.<p>- I imagine that if real disruption starts to occur these cars are going to be easy targets for vandals and disgruntled transportation employees.<p>- IIUC the leader, Waymo, does all the computation in the cloud, so you're hosed if the network goes down.<p>I'm rooting for self driving cars as much as anyone, but it seems like an uphill battle to achieve a "fleet of robotaxis" style approach... seems more likely to me that Waymo will eventually license the tech to automakers for use in personal vehicles.