General Motors’ Cruise autonomous driving unit just can’t catch a break these days. The company has made headlines for all the wrong reasons in recent months, but things have precipitated since early October, when one of its robotaxis ran over a pedestrian who had been previously struck by a hit-and-run driver.<\/p>\n
That accident raised a series of questions after it was determined that the Cruise AV dragged the pedestrian 20 feet in an attempt to pull over out of traffic. More flags were raised when it was discovered that Cruise had edited footage of the incident that it submitted to authorities, leaving out the pedestrian dragging part.<\/p>\n
This led to a series of cascading events that included an investigation opened by NHTSA into pedestrian risks posed by Cruise robotaxis, the California DMV revoking Cruise’s driverless operating permit \u2013 which led to Cruise halting all driverless operations across the country \u2013 and an announcement earlier this week that Cruise is pausing production of its Origin bespoke autonomous vehicle.<\/p>\n
We should also point out that Cruise posted a $732 million loss in the third quarter, although that wasn’t surprising since the unit had been hemorrhaging cash since GM bought it in 2016. In the first nine months of this year alone, losses amounted to $1.9 billion.<\/p>\n